


Shutdown

by littleoptimistme



Category: Sander Sides, Sanders Sides, Thomas Sanders
Genre: Accident, Anxiety, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders - Freeform, Gen, Inside Out (2015) References, Mental stuff, Profanity, Sanders Sides (Video Blogging RPF), injuries, logan is a prick, thomas sanders - Freeform, virgil - Freeform, virgil is a good person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-27 01:26:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12570608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleoptimistme/pseuds/littleoptimistme
Summary: After getting in a car accident, Thomas Sanders gets stuck inside his own head with a host of characters he thought were imaginary. Things aren't as friendly between the sides as he imagined, and Thomas has no idea how to wake up again.





	1. 1

AN: Many years ago I promised myself I would never stoop to writing fan fiction about real people. Well. whoops.

Summary: Thomas is stuck in his own head. When Thomas is in a car accident, Virgil has to enact a ‘failsafe’ that shuts everything and everyone down but himself. To his shock, Thomas, who is convinced that his sides are characters he has made up, appears inside the control room. And he... can’t leave.  
_____________________________________________________

“You made us oversleep.”

They were going to be late to the party and every single one of them was aware of it. However, Virgil was especially conscientious of this fact and it was driving him mad. They were crowded over the control board eyes, fixed on the massive screen in front of them. Thomas blinked and the screen went black for an instant. They looked through his eyes at the steering wheel and the road ahead. The control board was filled with a multitude of keys and buttons and levers and blinking lights, and the Sides busily scrambled around the board in no particular order. The room around them was metal and clean and multilayered with spiraling stairs and odd colored doors leading into hallways that not even they had fully explored. Warm yellow lights floated through the air and normally would be calming. But not today. In the control room, there was hardly ever order. Everyone wanted to be in charge and thus no one was.

“There’s nothing we could have done,” Logan said. He twisted a key and Thomas flicked on his turn signal. “Thomas needs sleep and someone has been not allowing him any more than four hours a night for more than a week now!”

Virgil shot Logan a dirty look and tried to worm his way back toward the board. Virgil had a way of standing that made it seem that he was folding in on himself. Slumped and crooked and a little bruised. “Look, if you had done your job and actually created a schedule like usual, then I wouldn’t have to wonder what we still have to do and-”

“We should speed up, kids!” Paton interrupted. He wound his hands under Logan’s and tapped on the keyboard. “We’ll get there sooner if we go faster!” Logan glared at him.

“Well, yes. But we can’t go past the speed limit.”

“The sky's the limit!” Roman roared. He shoved Logan into Virgil with more strength than he probably intended, and the two of them ended up in a heap on the floor.

“Ow!”

“Get off of me!”

Logan pursed his lips, stood up, and tried to get back through. “Honestly,” he muttered.

Meanwhile, Roman patted Patton on the head. “Faster, little guy.”

And Virgil just sat there. On the floor. He huffed and used the railing to stand up, straightening his hoodie. He knew that staying back was what the others wanted him to do. Things were easier when he stayed back.

But come on, this was ridiculous. He had a job to do, and he couldn’t just let them keep him from the control board. Especially since, “Are you sure we looked at the text right? Was the time one thirty or two-thirty?”

Logan glanced back and flicked a button. The text appeared in their mind’s eye on the screen. It starts at 2:30.

Virgil shifted his weight and tugged at his sleeves as he peered at the message. Was it right, though? Had they really seen that or was Logan remembering incorrectly? Logan might be remembering incorrectly. It had happened before. They should make sure. He should make sure it really was going to start at 2:30. Maybe he’d seen 12:30 and not noticed the one or something.

He shouldered up to Logan who cried out in exasperation. “Virgil, please! We need to get there on time and safely.”

Virgil tuned him out. He needed to make sure the text was right. He fumbled and finally got ahold of the correct button. He’d just pick up the phone and check…

Logan knocked his hand away. “We’ve looked at it three times, Virgil!”

“But we may have read it wrong!”

“I didn’t read it wrong!”

“Why do you have to be such a jerk about it?! I just want to look! We’ll seem stupid if we show up hours off of the correct time!” He grabbed the lever, and Thomas snapped up his phone. Clicked on the screen…

“It’s green!” Patton yelped. “The light’s green!”

“Thank you, Patton, I hear you.” Logan took away control, and Virgil threw his hands in the air. They all stumbled back as Thomas shot forward. “Easy on the gas, Patton,” Logan added. He straightened his tie and pinched between his eyes. Aw, the poor thing had a headache. Virgil couldn’t refrain from rolling his eyes.

Not to mention, Virgil still hadn’t seen the screen. “We still don’t know when we’re supposed to be there,” he chimed in.

And that was the last straw.

Logan stilled.

He slowly took his hands from the controls and turned to face him.

Whoops, Virgil thought. Unlike the rest of them, Logan did not become visibly frazzled when he was upset. He did not shout or scream or run in circles. He most certainly did not get the multi-layered (frankly terrifying) voice Anxiety had when he was pissed off.

Instead, Logan was calm. Completely calculating. Any trace of emotion that he had, any at all, was shut down completely.

It was utterly terrifying.

Virgil took a small step back. “L-Logan?”

“Why are you like this?” Logan asked. He gestured at him vaguely. At his clothes and his posture and his hair. “We have looked at the message four times. There is no need for you to continue insisting that we look at it once more.”

“I’m just doing my job,” Virgil spat. He held his ground as Logan came closer. So close his nose nearly touched his. They were the same height, but right then Logan seemed much larger.

“Your job is to keep Thomas safe. Instead,” He cocked his head “you are a mess of a creature.”

Virgil tightened his jaw. It infuriated him because it was true. He pushed Logan out of his face. They could say what they liked in the stupid videos Roman was heading up, but the real Logan and Patton and Roman? They still hated his guts (or in Patton’s case, was kinda scared of him). And that was fine. It was just how things were and no amount of ‘talking’ was going to fix that. Roman had been the one to let Thomas give proper names to the characters Thomas had created subconsciously. The ‘teacher’ character became Logan, as he properly was, Princey became Roman, the Dad became Patton and Virgil… Virgil just sort of happened after Virgil lost a bet with Roman which meant Roman could include him. “Every good story needs an antagonist, Virgil,” he recalled Roman arguing.

Whatever. The videos were interesting and entertaining and people loved it. But… Roman had a way of making things a bit more optimistic than they really were.

Virgil pushed past Logan, making sure to hit him roughly with his shoulder as he left the control board to find his chair in the corner. It was a dark area of the room with a door that let out into his bedroom hidden in the darkness. He had a large teardrop-shaped, black chair that spun in circles and was surrounded by a variety of comic books, CDs he liked and other junk he used to distract himself when he couldn’t sleep at night.

“Finally, an attogram of sense,” Logan snapped. Virgil fell into the chair and spun away from them with a flair for drama that caught Roman’s eye for an instant before he went back to playing with Patton. Virgil sighed and stared up at the ceiling. The metal spiraled in interesting patterns Virgil knew by heart. He has often been in this exact position at night, taking the late shift whether or not he (or any of them) liked it.

Virgil shook his head as the sides continued to argue behind him. What a bunch of dipshi-

“What’s that?” Patton’s voice interrupted.

“They should have stopped. They have a red light.”

Slowly, Virgil put his feet back on the floor. His sneakers scraped his chair to a stop and he frowned, listening.

“T-they aren’t slowing down!” Patton shrieked. Patton turned away from the screen. “Virgil, they’re not slowing down!”

No. W-what?

Virgil stood up and took a step forward. On the screen, a massive truck was racing toward them. Any second...

And suddenly he was standing in front of the control board. Everyone jumped back in shock, “Virg-”

“Shut up, Logan.” This was his area. He could do this. He slammed his hands on the controls and several alarms went off, jarring his bones. Red lights flashed, the floor shook, the lights flickered.

“WHAT DID YOU DO!” Roman shouted.

“Adrenaline, you idiot!” Virgil spat back. He took a deep breath, feeling suddenly exhausted (he was out of practice) and flicked his hair out of his eyes so he could see the screen. The truck had slowed to a crawl. The sun glinted off the hood. He swallowed and a shock of fear rushed through him. It was going to hit them. What kind of sick luck was that?

Behind him, he could feel Patton trembling, probably clinging onto Logan. “W-what do we do?”

Without further prompting, Logan pushed forward and shoved Virgil away. “The truck is going to hit us. There is no avoiding it. We have approximately three seconds to contact.” He straightened his glasses and started flicking at the keys. “Chances of survival at this angle are a slim twenty percent, which is unacceptable…”

“TWENTY PERCENT!”

“Quiet, Patton!”

“Can we do something to minimize the impact?” Virgil asked quickly. His hands were shaking, but in some ways, he was steadier than he had been in a long time.

Logan chewed his lip. “If we brace our arms on the steering wheel, we may stop from hitting the windshield. Our seatbelt is on. We can turn to the right to try and get the truck to his the back end of the car instead of our door...” Logan’s fingers flew over the board faster than Virgil had ever seen.

And suddenly he stopped.

He stepped back.

His lips were moving, eyes glazed as he calculated. A slow blink and he shook his head.

Virgil already knew what it meant. It wasn’t going to be enough. They weren’t going to be able to get out of the way in time. The truck was still inching closer. Patton sobbed, held up by Roman, who was frozen in shock.

Well, that just wasn’t good enough.

“There has to be something else we can do,”

Logan shook his head. “I-I don’t know. I can’t think of anything else-”

“What about the failsafe?” he interrupted. “We could enact the failsafe.”

The other three turned to him, shocked, but Logan was the only one who seemed to know what Virgil actually meant. His eyes glazed again and this time he nodded in an affirmative. “Yes. The failsafe is our only option.”

Virgil’s stomach dropped into his shoes. This was going to suck so bad.

“That’s nice,” Roman said, “But what the heck is a ‘failsafe’?”

Logan found time to roll his eyes. “If you had read the manual-”

“Everything, like everything, shuts down but one of the sides,” Virgil interrupted. “It preserves energy and that may be enough to keep Thomas alive.”

“Let’s do it then,” Patton answered immediately. Virgil was not accustomed to seeing him serious, but right then, he was very much so. Patton wiped his glasses with trembling hands and nodded. “We dissolve for a bit, and one of us brings us back once it’s safe, r-right?”

That was the idea. Course, it was incredibly risky and very possible that they might never reappear. That is if they didn’t die anyway.

“I will stay, obviously,” Logan said, which made sense to Virgil. Virgil tried to not think about how horrible it was going to feel to dissolve into… nothing. Temporary or not.

Maybe it would be a good thing if I just stayed dissolved. Better for Thomas… He batted the thought away

But Roman was shaking his head. “No, brainiac.”

Logan blinked.

“Explain. I am the safest choice. I am the only one with the manual memorized, not to mention, I know how to work for the entire board by myself.”

Virgil frowned. Why was Roman against it? It made perfect sense. Unless Roman wanted to stay himself?

“You take up too much energy,” Roman continued. “If you want to preserve energy, then obviously, myself and Patton ought to leave. But you also take up just as much, if not more than the two of us.”

Logan cocked his head.

Processed.

Virgil kept his eyes on the screen.

One second…

“Guys…”

“Virgil should stay,” Patton said.

Virgil whirled toward him. That was a horrible idea. “Patton, you want to leave me with the control room. Alone.”

Patton nodded. He wiped his nose. “Y-your job is to keep Thomas safe.”

Oh.

Oh, he supposed it was, he realized in surprise. Logan looked like he’d just eaten a stick. But Logic nodded. “Patton is… correct. You are quite a lot of things, but at your base, you are self-preservation. Which is all that we need right now. You are our best option… unfortunately.”

Thanks for the vote of confidence.

But there was no time for any more conversation. Virgil forced himself to keep breathing. The idea of staying here alone and solely responsible for Thomas’s continued existence was even more terrifying than dissolving. “O-okay,” he stuttered. He and Logan quickly set up the sequence on the board. It was complex, but Virgil had This Thing memorized because he was pretty much constantly terrified that he’d have to use the failsafe someday.

Funny enough, now that he was using it, he wasn’t quite as terrified as he thought he’d be. At least, not in the same way.

Logan stuck his hand out stiffly and Virgil shook it, hating that Logan most definitely could feel his clammy, shaking hand.

“Do not kill us,” Logan said.

“I’ll do my best.”

Logan nodded sharply and with that, Virgil looked up at the screen and the oncoming truck. It was now or never.

He slammed his hand onto the final button. It was red and large and generally horrible looking.

The moment he pressed the button, several things happened at once.

Logan’s hand melted from his own.

Patton and Roman screamed, and Virgil got a gut-wrenching glimpse of their dissolving faces before he was thrown from his feet.

The lights cut out.

And the truck slammed into them.

It was darker than he’d ever seen before. Darker than the time Thomas went on a tour of an underground tunnel, darker than the basement had been when they lost power one night. It wasn’t darkness. It was nothing. Nothing existed in here but Virgil. There was a high pitched whine scratching at his ears

Virgil slammed into the metal railing, the room barely online still.

He gasped but suddenly was thrown into the air again.

The room spun and tumbled and flew. He was like a pebble in a tin can. He crumpled into walls and floors and ceilings until his entire body roared in agony. It was never-ending. An eternity.

We’re dying. It wasn’t enough we’re dying we’re dying you idiot we’re going to die because of a text like one of those commercials we’re going to die oh god ohgodohgod

A bar flew flat against his stomach, and he doubled over the railing before tumbling over it and landing in a crumpled heap on the floor.

wediedwediedwe’redeadwediedIdead.

But…

He was still thinking. And he was still in pain. He’d always thought he’d stop being in pain if he was dead?

Stillness.

And an aching quiet that made him nauseous.

Maybe he was a ghost… Forced to sit in agony for eternity.

But, no, that didn’t make sense. He wasn’t a person. He wasn’t a whole person. He couldn’t be a ghost.

Virgil forced open his eyes.

In for four… hold for seven… out for eight…

He breathed. He could feel ribs creaking inside him, and the forced breaths only sent lasers of pain through him. But he had to stay awake. He had to stay here, or else Thomas would be lost.

For a long time, he didn’t know how long, he just laid here, curled in his jacket and trying to not think too hard (failing at this) about whether or not he could bleed and if he was bleeding out right now.

Maybe not?

Every bone in his body screamed at him, but he sat up slowly. Blinked.

Darkness.

He shivered. It was freezing in here.

We’re dying.

He needed to turn on the backups… He tried standing and settled for a crawl in the direction he hoped the control board was. It took a bit, but he managed to fumble his way toward it. He traced his fingers over the edges and used it to pull himself standing. Hands outstretched, he pressed the button he knew would be the only one available at the moment. The button stuck for a moment, but he grunted and pressed harder, and it clicked.

A pause.

Nothing happened and panic wrapped a tight hand around his throat. Oh god oh god oh god.

Machinery reluctantly whirled to life somewhere in the walls, and Virgil fell to the floor, both in relief and because he couldn’t hold himself up any longer. He dropped his head against the side of the control board and winced when the lights flicked on. Hot air warmed the room.

The backup lights were fluorescent and greenish and dim and they buzzed like a fly caught in a fly trap. But, whatever, it was light and Virgil was grateful.

The shadows were long and deep, but he could see that the control room was completely trashed. The walls were buckled and bent, various books and machinery and pieces of furniture were mashed to pieces on the floor. The stairs were broken, and a bar from the railing was lodged in the ceiling. Virgil gulped dryly. That bar could have impaled him...

Inhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, hold, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, exhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8…

What the heck was he supposed to do now? His thoughts were flicking around like bats and he couldn’t- couldn’t think. What was supposed to happen now? What happens when you get in a car crash?

“Someone will help,” he croaked. “Someone might help us.”

That was all he could hope for.

He needed to monitor Thomas’s vitals. Make sure they stayed semi-steady.

Virgil shut his eyes. Come on, loser, get up.

Using the control board for support, Virgil dragged himself to his feet. Where was he hurt?

Definitely, some ribs were broken, maybe his collarbone, a few cuts on his face, bruises basically everywhere. No arms or legs broken, cut in… his hair? He felt in his bangs, and, yup, that was absolutely blood on his fingers now. But that was okay. He could deal with this. As long as he just breathed really shallowly. He had to keep going.

He blinked at the charts on the control board. Everything was red. Basically, completely falling apart. He set to work without hesitation, pumping chemicals, filling Thomas with more adrenaline and anything else he could think of that might help. The charts steadied a bit. Just a bit. But… he wasn’t getting any worse for now.

He was slumped against the control board, arms rigid straight to keep him up as his head dropped to his chest, trembling.

That was how the newcomer must have first seen him. And what a pitiful sight it must have been.

“H-hello?” said a voice.

Virgil’s head jerked up and he growled in pain as the movement sent pulses down his spine. He cursed quietly

“Is anyone here?”

Slowly, Virgil turned. He frowned. Who could possibly be speaking? There was no one in here but him. That was the whole point. It didn’t sound like any of the Sides, and unless there was another side who decided to show up in a crisis, Virgil couldn’t think of anyone else it could be.

So he stayed quiet. Did nightmares survive the shutdown, or did they continue to exist? Was the voice a nightmare’s? His stomach tightened at the thought.  
Someone came closer. Their footsteps tapped on the metal floor.

And out of the shadows melted a very familiar face.

Virgil’s mouth dropped open and a broken piece of metal he’d been holding semi-consciously slipped from his fingers. It clanged on the floor, jarringly loud, and the stranger glanced up at him.

They both stood there.

The stranger was dressed in the clothes Roman had put Thomas in this morning, a purple t-shirt and jeans, and he didn’t seem to be particularly afraid. Confused maybe, but not afraid. He picked his way around the destroyed furniture of the control room.

“Wow. Was there, like, an earthquake or something?”

Virgil didn’t dare move from his spot in the shadows.

It wasn’t possible. He could not possibly get inside here.

The stranger worked his way through the shadows. “I, um, hi!” He tried a smile. “Do you think you could tell me where I am? I-I don’t know how I got here.” For the first time, this seemed to register with him as not good, and concern flashed across the man’s features. He looked up and took the room in. “What is this place? A plane? A subway? Am I in a subway station?”

Virgil had no idea what to do. This was not supposed to happen. Ever.

“Hey, you! Dude over there!” the stranger continued. He waved a hand in the air. “I’m talking to you!”

Virgil swallowed.

With a grumble, the stranger came closer. He picked his way up the stairs. “Man, this is insane. It’s like someone turned the whole room upside down.”

Really. How observant of him.

He opened his mouth to say something, but the stranger finally was close enough to meet Virgil’s eyes. The stranger froze. He took a small step back.

Oh. Right. This was going to totally freak him out.

“W-what’s- that’s not, who are- you shouldn’t- you’re not-”

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” Virgil interrupted. He forced himself to stand up straight and look the stranger up and down. The stranger did the same to him. He was afraid now. Virgil could see it in his eyes.

“V-Virgil?” the stranger said.

“In the flesh.” Virgil repressed a groan of pain and gave the stranger a smile he hoped was reassuring. “Hey, it’s okay. Thomas, right?”

Thomas nodded, just barely.

“I’m going to get you out of here, Thomas.”

Thomas blinked. “This isn’t happening. This isn’t real.”

How exactly to respond to that… In some ways, he was right. “Well… I mean, if that’s easier for you or whatever. Yeah, this is all in your head.”

Thomas didn’t look reassured. Great.

Man, he didn’t have time for this. He couldn’t play nursemaid. He needed to keep Thomas alive.

The charts behind him dipped. Cursing, Virgil turned back around and scrambled for buttons and keys until it steadied again.

He could feel Thomas just behind him, breathing too shallowly, looking over his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“Keeping us alive.” He didn’t have the energy to come up with a lie Thomas would buy. “We were in a car accident and we had to shut down everything so that you stayed that way.”

Thomas opened his mouth. Closed it again.

“I-I don’t remember that.”

“Yeah, you’ll probably remember when you wake up.” Virgil wiped his nose, and his sleeve came away bloody. Wonderful. Things were just going peachy today.

Thomas just stared. “You’re not real. You’re a character I made up. You’re n-not, you shouldn’t be…” Thomas shook his head and backed up.

Virgil didn’t blame him for that panic. He’d told him this was a dream, but he knew it wouldn’t feel like a dream. It felt real. Because it was real.

Just… not physically real.

But he couldn’t take any more panic. He was panicking well enough on his own. “Thomas,” he barked.

Thomas froze, hands in his hair as he looked around the room in dismay. “W-what?”

“Calm your ass, I’ve got shit to do.”

Thomas took a deep breath and let it out again. “I’m dreaming. That’s all.”

The room had started a slow spin around Virgil, and he rubbed his eyes to clear his head. Stay awake.

“Yeah. It’s a bit more… intense than a dream obviously because it’s… different. I don’t really have time to explain this to-” He gasped as another lightning bolt went from the top of his head to his feet. He growled in frustration. Alarms went off behind him.

We’re going to die and it’s all your fault, you idiot.

His grip on the board was slipping and the whole room was blurring and-

A hand was on his arm.

Thomas lowered him to the ground and crouched with him. “You’re hurt.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Virgil spat. He felt guilty a second later. “Sorry,” he mumbled. He felt like a piece of crumpled glass. All sharp edges and broken bits. He breathed in and out and Thomas’s hands fretted around him. he didn’t know what to do. But that was okay because his touch was still calming and warm. Virgil normally hated being touched. It was alright now but he curled inward on impulse.

“What’s wrong?” Thomas asked him.

Virgil forced open his eyes again and instantly his eyes were drawn to the flashing alarms on the board. “I’ve got to-to-” He tried to stand, but Thomas pressed him down firmly.

“Don’t do anything. What the hell…” He peeled back Virgil’s jacket (and there was no way anyone else was ever going to be allowed to do that). Virgil shivered. “You’re chest looks…”

“Broken,” Virgil growled. “I know. I need to get to those alarms.”

Thomas shook his head. His eyes darted around Virgil’s face. “Dude, no. Stop with the alarms.”

If Thomas knew what those alarms meant, he might have reacted differently. Virgil couldn’t push him away, however, and this was going to be a problem. He forced himself to meet Thomas’s eyes. “Thomas, if I don’t stop those alarms, we’re going to die.”

Thomas paled. “Like, in real life.”

“In real life.” Virgil didn’t have any way to prove that to him, and he knew it. He dropped his head to his chest, regretting the movement, but didn’t have the strength to lift his head again. “Damn it, Thomas.” Thomas was right there in front of him. He was sort of blurry now, but Virgil could feel the warmth and light that radiated from him. It was soothing. Calm.

Virgil, stay with me.

Naw. He was tired. Too tired.

Damn it, Virgil, tell me what to do.

Virgil couldn’t open his eyes. “Adrenaline,” he hissed.

Thomas’s light left his side, leaving him cold and empty.

How do I work this thing…

How sad was this? They were going to die because Thomas’s conscious mind had no idea how to work his own brain.

There.

Or…

Not.

A jolt of electricity rushed through Virgil, and he gasped, choking on the air and thrown forward. “Shit, dude! Not so much!” He scrambled to his feet. Adrenaline was not a miracle juice. He felt like he’d been electrocuted repeatedly. But those shocks kept him moving. He ran, fell, stumbled, to the control board and instantly dialed down the adrenaline. “We’re going to have a heart attack if you keep that up.”

Thomas didn’t seem to care. He grinned. “That’s amazing! What’s that button do?” he pointed to a small green one.

“I-I dunno! Logan’s the one with them all memorized. I just know my part.”

“Oh.”

Virgil’s fingers raced across the board, and a few seconds later the alarms faded. The lights returned. Virgil was shaking uncontrollably, but hey, he was alive.

“Wait.” Thomas frowned. “Logan. Logan’s here too?”

Virgil gave him a look. He was burning up in his jacket but knew if he took it off he’d panic. “Of course Logan’s here. Patton and Roman too.”

“That makes sense.” Thomas frowned. “Where are they then? Why aren’t they helping you? Are they hurt to?”

Virgil shook his head. “They’re fine, probably. I had to shut down everything so that we had enough energy to… you know, keep breathing.”

Thomas swallowed thickly. “Right… and h-how long do we have?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? Virgil typed on the keyboard and some numbers flashed across the black screen. Thomas jumped at the sudden glowing light. “We have enough energy to keep going without assistance for… an hour.”

Thomas said nothing. In fact, he was so quiet that Virgil glanced at him to make sure he hadn’t disappeared for some reason. He was still there, staring up at the screen. The green words reflected in his eyes.

“Are you okay?” Virgil asked. He wasn’t really good at the whole ‘comfort’ thing but he’d try for Thomas.

Thomas cleared his throat and looked away from the screen. “Can you take that down?”

Virgil did. He watched Thomas carefully. He was panicking, terrified, but somehow able to keep that under control. They had a goal and panicking was not going to help them stay alive. It was… weird. To be panicked but focused at once.

He seemed to feel much like Virgil, actually. Which made sense since Virgil was the only one awake at the moment.

“S-so,” Thomas said. His hands trailed over the keys idly. “What happens now?”

“We wait and hope paramedics show up. We were in the middle of a city, so it shouldn’t be too long.”

Thomas’s shoulder’s relaxed. He nodded. “Okay.”

Poor guy, Virgil found himself thinking. This could not possibly be easy.

“You know what?”

Virgil raised an eyebrow.

“This is… this whole room… is exactly like Inside Out.”

This observation was so unexpected, Virgil choked on something that was almost a laugh. He managed a smile, still leaning heavily on the control board. “Yeah,” he croaked. “It’s exactly like Inside Out. Roman lost his shit when we first saw that movie and did some redecorating in honor of it.”

Thomas snorted. “I watched that movie like thirty times.”

“I know. He really liked it once he got over how similar it was to… this.”

Thomas nodded, processing. He scrubbed his face with his hands. “This is insane.”

Yeah, it was. But Virgil didn’t volunteer that thought, instead, he focused on the charts. A little here, a little there, balancing a tipping ship. Fifty-five minutes.

“Are you still in pain?”

Virgil grunted. “Yes. But it’s fine.”

“... Why am I not hurt? I mean, if you’re me...”

Yes. Virgil glanced at him and shrugged. “Dude, I dunno. You want schematics, have a talk with Logan when he gets back.”

Thomas huffed and sat back, his arms crossed.

Suddenly, the charts flickered. The lights brightened and dulled and brightened again, and the floor shook. Thomas grabbed for a railing. “What was that?”

Virgil rubbed an eye with the base of his palm and smiled. Something in him eased. “Paramedics.”

The charts bubbled up and down for a bit as they were moved, but then the room stilled and the little red bars edged up into orange and then yellow.

Behind him, Thomas let out a scared sounding laugh. “About time.”

Slowly, Virgil slid to the floor. He rested against the cool metal and basked in the relief of whatever drugs they were giving Thomas.

Time slipped and slid between his fingers, and a second later, Thomas shook him awake.

Virgil hissed.

“Oh, sorry. Forgot.”

Idiot.

“But look,” Thomas was grinning. He scrambled to his feet to look at the charts and crouched down to Virgil again. “You should be feeling better, right? The bars are all a totally solid… yellow. Like, not green, but yellow is still good right? Yellow is good.”

His words clanged like rocks in Virgil’s head. He scrubbed his face and sat up. “Yeah. Yellow is good. Look at the little squiggly thing to the left. Is it green yet?”

Thomas hopped up.

And shot down again. His hair flopped with each movement. Honestly, he was almost as bad as Patton. Was he trying to give him a heart attack?

But then again, they did almost just die there. So maybe some elation was in order.

“It’s green! I was so freaked out for a bit there, Verge, but I think we’re gonna be okay. I think we’re gonna make it.”

Virgil grunted.

But truly, it was awesome. He’d never felt so relieved in his life.

He tried to stand and Thomas glared at him. “Don’t be stupid. Stay seated. Now… I’ve got to figure out how to… wake… up.” He glanced around the room, and Virgil followed suit.

The lights were brighter now. The little floating orbs of light were back (which was great, he loved those fuzzy things) and Thomas was briefly enraptured by them.

But the light only made it more obvious what the room was missing.

Thomas hopped off the platform near the control board and picked across the broken furniture. “Where're the doors? How do you get out of here without doors…”

Virgil stilled.

That wasn’t right.

There should be doors. Several of them.

And there definitely should be a door that Thomas could use to get out of here.

But he hefted himself up and sure enough, where the doors usually were, there were only walls.

Shit.

“Maybe it’s because of the failsafe.”

Thomas nodded. “Yeah. That’s probably it.”

Virgil had no idea, but it was the only thing he could think of right now. He still didn’t know how Thomas had entered here in the first place. Perhaps when he shut off the failsafe, Thomas would go back to wherever he was supposed to be.

That sounded reasonable.

Right.

And Thomas had said the squiggly thing on the left was green, which meant there was enough energy to turn off the failsafe.

“Alright, Thomas. I’m going to bring everything back online. You should wake up. Hopefully in a hospital with a hot nurse or two.”

Thomas wrinkled his nose. “Eh, there’s only so many dude nurses.”

“One can hope.” Virgil twisted a knob and another and another.

“H-hey Virgil?”

Virgil paused. Thomas was giving him a weird look. A silly sort of half-smile. “Thank you. For keeping me ‘online’.”

Oh. Virgil cleared his throat and turned back toward the board. He wasn’t good with stuff like this. Of course, he’d kept him alive. “Yeah, well, that’s my job.”

“Thanks, anyway.”

“You’re welcome, I guess. And…” He had his hand on the last button and with the other, he rubbed the back of his neck. “You did, uh, you know, you did good too, Thomas. When it counted.”

Thomas grinned.

Virgil pressed the button.

And the room exploded into white light.

Warmth filled his bones and the pain eased. Not completely, but enough. He took his first deep breath since the accident, and only had a twinge of pain. A great hot wind rushed through the room and a smell like a peppermint came with it.

The light faded.

Virgil blinked to clear his vision. There were a few thumps as the various Sides landed in wrinkled piles on the floor around the floor.

“THAT WAS SO SCARY. HE WAS LIKE WOOSH AND THEN IT WAS DARK AND THEN IT WAS LIGHT AND THE FLOOR WENT AWAY AND-”

“Patton, you are shouting in my ear.”

Virgil breathed a sigh of relief. They were alright. They’d made it back.

Patton and Logan helped each other up, looking disheveled, but otherwise no worse for wear. They put on their glasses, frowned, switched glasses, and then looked around the room. Behind them, Roman lay sprawled out on the floor. “Oh dear lords, that trip has wounded me mightily.”

“You are perfectly well, Roman,” Logan answered. He blinked owlishly at Virgil and then gave him a sharp nod. “I see we all made it. Wonderful. Shocking, but wonderful.” The room had not been restored entirely, but some of the furniture had disappeared. It was generally better looking than it had been a moment ago, which was all Virgil could ask for.

Virgil stepped down toward them but froze mid-step.

“Woah,” said a voice. “I mean, woah.”

All of the sides glanced toward the speaker, who gave them a nervous smile. “Uh, so this is so weird to actually see you, but… I’m Thomas. Nice to meet you, I guess?”

Virgil’s stomach dropped.


	2. Chapter 2

Things hadn’t always been like this.

Virgil remembered when he used to be the older brother. He and Patton had watched over two small puffs of Logic and Creativity as they struggled to figure out just what they were supposed to do. When Thomas lost his two front teeth, everyone turned to Virgil for direction. When Roman nearly ran them into the road, Virgil was the one that took hold of the situation. Virgil kept them calm when they fell off their bike and when they got lost in the grocery store. Virgil had been the one they all turned to.

He didn’t miss being in charge. No. But he did miss the looks they used to give him. Trusting. Open. Willing. Virgil knew what was best for Thomas, they believed, and they weren’t going to argue that.

Until they did. Or, really, Logan did. Neither Logan nor Roman recalled how small they had been once upon a time. Logan used to have to stand on his tiptoes to snatch Patton’s glasses before he got his own, and Roman used to play with army guys all by himself (well, he still did that, but you get the point). Unlike Virgil, the other sides had to grow up.Virgil had always been like this.

Well. Not exactly like this, but he’d always been the same age anyway. Nowadays, there was a tossup between Logan and Roman on who exactly was in charge. It fluctuated by day, but for the most part, it was not Anxiety. He had his fair share of input (too much, Logan would say) but he didn’t try to take charge anymore. Because the other sides were right. There was something broken in him.

“I do not see the purpose of standing back,” Logan had said a very long time ago. “They are similar in age and have not shown any sign of malice toward us. Mom said that we ought to ‘make friends’ which entails talking to them. Are we to talk from such a great distance? It is impractical.”

At the time, Virgil hadn’t really had a name. Well, he had his name but he didn’t have anything for the other’s to call him. ‘Brother’ had been in common usage, he recalled. “It’s not that simple, Lo,” he explained. “People don’t always show it on their faces when they don’t like you. They might not like us. They could just be being nice because their moms made them.”

“That is preposterous. There is no reason that they should already be disposed against us.” Logan had a stool to reach the board. He climbed up it and toggled the buttons. “Watch, brother.”

Virgil watched.

Something in the base of his chest curled and tightened. It was a mostly new sensation. A constant jitter inside him. Like he was being knotted up inside. His hands suddenly seemed to move on their own. He jumped forward and quickly counteracted Logan’s commands.

Thomas backed away quickly and hid in the playground tunnel again.

“Hey!”

“Let’s just play by ourselves. We can do that, right, Roman?”

Roman had grinned up at him, dressed head to foot in hot pink chainmail. “Yes!”

The knot in Virgil’s stomach loosened slightly. “See? It’s fine, Logan.”

But Logan wasn’t having it. He hopped off his stool, straightened his too-large glasses, and walked off with a straight back. “This is absolute hogwash.”

Virgil sighed. “Logan-”

“Let him go.”

Virgil turned. Patton was spinning slowly in a swivel chair near the control board. He was perhaps twelve years old. He smiled even though Virgil glared at him.

“I could have used some support there.”

Patton shrugged. “He’ll get over it.” Standing, he took Roman’s hand and led him off to his room. “Let’s play, kiddo.”

“So I was thinking you could be the princess this time?”

“Alright?”

It had never really gotten better, and Logan never seemed to ‘get over it’. He was not built for forgiveness. Or compromise.

Course, it wasn’t all his fault.

“You act against reason!” Logan shouted at him. He had his hands in the air, overcome with frustration. “You limit him!”

Now, Virgil wondered how things would have turned out if he’d agreed with Logan. If he’d tried to work with him. He wondered if he even could. But he hadn’t tried. Instead, the knot in his stomach wound tighter, and he’d come nose to nose with Logan. “I am doing my job. And I will do whatever it takes to keep Thomas safe.”

He remembered the very first flicker of fear in Logan’s upturned face. That stubborn set in his eyes.

Logan had every right to hate him now.

And Virgil had no right to do anything but take the abuse. In the control room, the tension was high and had been ever since he’d been allowed slight access again. But the tension was reaching record-breaking levels now.

They all stared.

Frozen in complete disbelief and shock. Logan was the first to recover. “I apologize. I appear to have heard you incorrectly. It is not possible for Thomas to be here.”

Thomas cocked his head. “Really? Virgil didn’t say that.”

“I was busy.” Virgil winced as he walked toward the group. None of the Sides took note.

Thomas was growing increasingly uncomfortable under their stares. He rubbed the back of his neck. Why was he still here? He should have woken up when Virgil turned everything back on. Logan’s gaze narrowed.

Instead, the screen was still black, and Thomas was standing there, looking a bit lost.

“I don’t understand,” Roman started.

“Wait, so like that’s Thomas? Thomas Thomas?” A huge grin spread across Patton’s face. Without further ado, he threw himself into Thomas, who yelped.

“P-Patton?”

“Yupa-daisy, kiddo! Don’t you worry, we’re going to get you all sorted. But it is so good to actually meet you!” He hugged him tightly.

Thomas was smiling, but he slowly took himself out of Patton’s arms. “I’m hugging myself,” he whispered to no one in particular.

Meanwhile, Logan was calculating under his breath. He cocked his head at Thomas. “Salutations, Thomas. While I agree with Patton, this is most irregular.”

“Dear God, You actually talk like that.”

Virgil cracked a smile. “Mr. Thesaurus likes to sound smart.”

“I am smart, Virgil,” Logan said. Probably harsher than necessary. Thomas frowned, but Roman and Patton were all over him, babbling and hugging and gesturing.

Logan and Virgil watched this display, arms crossed. “What did you do?”

Virgil sighed inwardly. He’d figured this was coming. “I saved our life, thank you very much.”

“Perhaps. We may be alive, but if Thomas is unable to leave here, we will be rendered completely comatose.”

Virgil nodded. Of course, he knew this. He scowled at Logan. “Look, dude, I did the best I could.”

“That isn’t good enough.” He nodded toward Thomas. “You must have gone through some procedure incorrectly.”

Virgil absolutely had not done anything incorrectly. And it was a pain that Logan would accuse him as such. Then again, even if Thomas hadn’t been here, Logan would have found something in Virgil’s performance that was lacking. That’s just how he was.

“I don’t know why he’s here or how he got here, or how to get him to leave. He just showed up.”

Logan pursed his lips and crossed his arms. “Yes, well. That is all remarkably useless information.”

He was right. It was.

Thomas was laughing and Patton dragged him back toward where his door would usually be. They reached the wall and Patton stopped.

He stared at the smooth metal surface.

“Um, guys?”

Virgil crossed his arms.

“Virgil,” Logan said in a low voice. “Where are the doors?”

They were still gone. Every door had been erased. Every window. Virgil swallowed thickly. We’re trapped. We’re trapped in here.

“What’s going on?” Roman asked.

They all turned. One by one. To stare at Virgil. In a way, it shook him because it was so similar to how they used to act. But it was different now. These were not questioning looks, ready for him to give an answer. They were worried. Accusing. Afraid.

God, why was he such a freaking screw up?

Virgil’s stomach tightened. “I don’t know. I thought the doors might come back once I turned everything on again.”

Their faces fell. Logan cursed quietly. He raced up to the control board and tapped on the keys.

Nothing happened.

“Well, shit,” Roman supplied to the silence.

They all gave various murmurs of agreement and joined Logan at the control board, even Thomas, who was looking steadily more and more worried.

“Okay, so there’s got to be a way out of this. I’m not… I can’t just stay stuck here.”

Virgil’s stomach rolled. He reached a hand toward the board but retracted quickly when Logan glared at him. “You’ve done enough damage, I think.”

Virgil said nothing. In fact, no one said anything at all. Patton grabbed Thomas’s hand tightly and Roman stared at the screen, as by the sheer force of his will, he could turn it on. Virgil hugged his arms to his chest (his ribs seemed to be alright now). And the just stood there.

“Ideas, anyone?”

They glanced at Roman, who grimaced. “I could… cut a hole with my…” He reached down to his belt and suddenly paled. “My sword! My sword is gone!”

“You left it in your room when we were tidying up, remember?”

Roman groaned. “I am the most abominable of idiots.”

And now it was Thomas’s turn to grimace. “Well, I mean, I don’t think-”

“Cutting a hole is an interesting option, however,” Logan cut in. He chewed his lip, tried the unresponsive keys again, and sighed. “Do we have anything sharp?”

Woah, Woah, Virgil did not like where this is going. “Guys, I don’t think it’s a good idea to go around cutting holes in Thomas’s mindscape.”

Thomas held up a hand. “I second that?”

Logan just rolled his eyes. “It’s minor surgery at the worst and not even physical so-”

“Minor surgery. Think about what you just said right there.”

“Look, do you want to get out of here?”

Thomas shifted his weight. He hugged his arms to himself. “I… yes. Yes, I do. But Virgil has a point. I mean, what if it like, damages me somehow?”

Roman shrugged. “I’d like to counter that I cut up things in here all the time.”

Thomas stared, horrified. “But-”

“Then again, I am only cutting up things in my realm, not the base mindscape so perhaps it is different. Not that I am unwilling to risk it.”

“Of course you’re willing to risk it, you’re a freaking hazard.”

Virgil regretted the words once they left his mouth, but he really couldn’t control these things. He was the bringer of negative thoughts and they weren’t really in his control. Especially not right now.

Of course, the others didn’t see it that way.

“Virgil, what the hell. We don’t need that right now.”

Virgil rolled his eyes, stuck his hands into his pockets and sat down on an upturned piece of something that may have been a swivel chair before the room went through a blender.

The room went quiet as Logan kept poking the keys, muttering to himself. They were getting nowhere. Thomas was going to be stuck here with their lame asses until they got old and died. And _it’s your fault. You didn’t keep him safe._ Virgil wanted to be sick. He wanted to curl up in a ball on the floor and bury his face in a blanket and not think about anything. He wanted to be oblivious. He wanted to never have to see Patton’s eyes filled with hesitation when he looked at him. He didn’t want Roman’s pity or Logan’s… damn, Logan’s hatred. For someone who advertised being unemotional, Logan certainly had strong feelings when it came to anxiety.

He supposed it was because anxiety was, above all, illogical.

And it was only logical that Logan would not be able to stand that.

Virgil almost didn't notice Thomas’s bewildered look. “Hang on, what is wrong with you guys? I thought… I thought you were getting along?”

Romans shifted his weight guiltily. “I… may have altered some elements for the video series, Thomas.”

“It was agreed,” Logan began. His voice was clipped and sharp like little metal cubes. “that it was better for your emotional health if we do not have obvious animosity.”

“And it makes me feel good,” Patton mumbled.

Thomas digested that. Virgil could feel his stare, but he kept his eyes on his shoes. Thisisyourfaultallyourfaultyouidiot.

Apparently finished with the keyboard, Logan walked quickly toward his bookcase (which was strewn everywhere) in his corner of the room. He continued speaking over his shoulder. “Although it is an interesting idea, it is simply not possible to ‘accept’ a trait so deeply trenched in negativity.”

“Screw you, Logan.”

“Thank you for the demonstration.”

_He’s such a dick. He’s such a freaking dick._

Logan paid them no mind as he searched through the piles of books scattered around his area. “The manual is here somewhere…”

Deep inside, Virgil boiled. Why did he always have to take this, huh? What the hell did Logan want from him? Suddenly decided, Virgil stood up and stalked to Logan’s corner. “Okay! Whatever! I just saved your freaking ass, so a little less I-hate-you is maybe in order!”

Logan sneered and shoved a book into Virgil’s arms. “Maybe you should read the rule book and stop messing everything up.”

There really wasn’t any talking to him! Virgil gripped the book tightly and searched for something to say. Anything. “I don’t deserve this!”

Logan pursed his lips. There was a spark there deep in his eyes. Something sharp and pointed and hurt. “You don’t deserve anything.”

He stormed past him, up the stairs and back to the dashboard. Virgil followed him. The other sides had backed up, taking Thomas with them. Virgil could see them out of the corner of his eye and something in him twisted, but he was too focused on said-dickface to do anything about the tears in Patton’s eyes or the complete emotionless shutdown Roman was pulling off or the panic that was swallowing Thomas. Logan needed to stop.

“Stop ignoring me!” He was shouting now, although he wasn’t sure when the argument had escalated to that degree.

Logan said nothing. He slammed open a book and messed with the keyboard.

“Logan, please!” He could feel it. The very slight tremor at the base of his being. It echoed slightly in his voice and Logan stiffened.

_Shit, back down now. Before you do something-_

**_“Listen to me!”_ **

Too late.

There was a click, almost audible in his mind, and all at once, Virgil was powerless.

Patton screamed and Roman was babbling mindlessly and Thomas scrambled back away from all of them as Virgil’s shadow grew. Larger and larger until the room was cloaked in a thick darkness. Virgil’s head buzzed. He couldn’t move. Not like he wanted to. Everything was small and dark and he c o uldn ‘t.

He couldn’t scream.

With calculated calm, Logan closed the book and turned toward Virgil. He straightened his glasses.

“See, Thomas,” he said, “This is why it is not possible to accept Anxiety. This is the true Virgil.”

_Noitsnotnoitsnotnoitsnot._

Instead, a smirk forced itself onto his face and he raised his arms, casually perusing the room. “Goodness me, it really is a mess in here, isn’t it?”  
Stop please stop

It wasn’t going to stop. This thing which lived inside him, festering like a rotting wound, was never ever going to be finished with them.

“Thomas, dear, wouldn’t you come closer?”

_RUN THOMAS_

Thomas stared up at him, his eyes red, his skin deathlike in the purple light that must have been emanating from Virgil. And then there was something unexpected.

Thomas’s eyes were not afraid. They were… sad.

That was the last semi-normal thought he had before something shattered behind him. Virgil turned around to feel a great wind push him backward. No, pull him backward.

The screen.

Roman was standing a good distance away, his eyes wide as he registered what he’d just done. In his hands was, presumably, another piece of metal.

The one piece had disappeared into the hole he had just made in the screen.

Virgil’s stomach dropped as pieces of glass came loose and were sucked into the hole. Bigger and bigger until the hole was a yawning mouth filled with jagged teeth, inhaling all the while.

Virgil’s feet slipped on the smooth metal, and with a sound of rage, he went spinning toward the hole. Virgil screamed, but his mouth didn’t move, and as he struggled to stay on his feet, Logan was doing the same. They clung to the railing and Logan was shouting. Everyone was shouting. Virgil caught glimpses.

_Patton crying. Roman holding Thomas back. Logan screaming, reaching out for Patton._

Then Virgil’s hand slipped.

And he fell. Into a great expanse of darkness so thick he could breathe it.

As the light from the console room faded, another figure fell through as well. Virgil’s last thought before he lost consciousness was that someone else is stuck with me.


	3. Chapter 3

The ground was warm and wet and sticky and Virgil lay flat against it, unbreathing, unseeing, paralyzed.

And suddenly he gasped. He gasped and choked and gagged on the liquid in his lungs. He was alive.

Sort of. He spit onto the ground and wiped his mouth with a sweaty sleeve.

The thrumming under his skin had receded, and the creature inside him had gone away once more. Either out of exhaustion or boredom. Virgil wasn’t sure which one he preferred. He cautiously sat up, his joints cracking and grumbling.

Black.

In all directions.

Eternal, forever, inky black.

Virgil struggled to his feet and turned in a crooked circle. “Hello?”

Nothing.

Virgil’s heart pounded. He lifted his hands and felt in front of him. A few steps and there was nothing but the sound of his sticky steps as he walked… Until he tripped over something warm. He cursed and tried to catch himself so he wouldn’t fall on top of it. On top of him.

The person groaned, and Virgil recognized his voice immediately. His heart clenched, and he quickly scrambled to figure out how he was laying. “L-logan?”

Another groan and then Logan moved. He muttered quietly and sat up, which sent waves of relief through Virgil. He was okay.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt? Logan tell me-”

“I’m fine,” Logan snapped. He pushed Virgil’s hands off his shoulders.

Oh… Oh, okay. Virgil sat back on his heels and squinted. He could just barely see an outline of thicker darkness that was Logan.

Logan struggled to his feet. “Well,” he said, upon surveying the scene. “Shit.”

That almost would have been funny in another situation. Logan hardly ever cursed. “Yeah…” Virgil scratched the back of his head. What if we’re stuck here forever? “Do you have any idea what this is?”

“If by ‘this’ you mean this dark hole that you have sent us to…”

Virgil clenched his jaw but didn’t argue. Logan… ever the prick. “Where are we?”

“I imagine this is Thomas’s subconscious. Or a form of it.”

“Right.”

Logan huffed and began walking, limping, away. No, no, no. Virgil couldn’t be left here by himself.

Virgil scrambled after him. “Where are you going!”

“Away from you.”

“Okay, ouch. That hurts.”

“I hope it does.”

Wow. So he really was pissed at him. Virgil couldn’t exactly blame him, but… okay but he still wanted to blame him.

“I suppose you have calmed down now.” His tone was light. But Virgil knew him too well. Logan could say whatever he liked, but he just as emotional as the rest of them. And this, pretending he wasn’t, was usually his tactic to avoid particularly unsettling feelings. Which was totally healthy and all that. In short, Logan was boiling.

Course he was. Virgil just inadvertently cast them down into the depths of whatever this place was.

Virgil frowned. “It’s not like that.”

“Oh?” Logan turned and a finger stabbed into his chest. “Please inform me of ‘what it is like’ Virgil. Because to me, it seems that you turn into a Tim Burton cartoon with little to no empathy or morality not to mention impulse control when you’re angry.”

He admitted it sounded horrible when he said it that way. And suddenly Logan’s finger was gone. He was walking away again. “I will figure this out alone if you do not mind.”

Shit. He did not want to be left alone in here. He wasn’t going to ever find his way back alone. “Logan, please. I’m- I’m sorry.”

“Apologies are sentimental and meaningless”

Virgil walked quickly in the direction Logan’s voice came from. “I know. I don’t mean to get like that. It’s not my fault I-”

A hand closed around his neck and Virgil suddenly couldn’t speak. He pursed his lip irritably and sensed Logan’s eyes on him. “What on earth do you mean? Of course, it’s you.”

No. It’s inside me, damn it.

But the invisible hand tightened, and Virgil said nothing.

After a moment of waiting for Virgil to respond, Logan huffed and continued walking. “What I would like to know is why you believe it is acceptable behavior. You do not see the rest of us going into fits of rage.”

Virgil rolled his eyes and followed grumbling, “It wasn’t a ‘fit of rage’.”

“You grow several feet and become a skeletal, large-eyed creature with glowing purple eyes and two voices. That is quite a fit of rage.”

He couldn’t really argue. Especially because it quietly placed its hand on his shoulder again. A warning. Virgil swallowed. Okay fine. He wasn’t allowed to talk about it. Even if it was not been so dark in here, Logan would not have seen it. No one ever did.

“What do you want me to say, Logan?”

“I don’t know!”

“Well, what am I supposed to do then!”

“Stop asking me questions!”

And suddenly… Logan was gone.

Virgil’s stomach dropped. Ohnoohnoohno… “Logan!”

No answer.

He tried again, louder. But the darkness ate up his voice. “This isn’t funny, Lo! Please don’t leave me here!”

But he’d deserve it if he did.

Yes.

He deserved that and more.

When they were younger, Virgil had been worse. Much worse than he was now. On top of being a general, catastrophic mess that only occasionally made it outside of his bedroom to the controls and back, his ‘little resident’ had been much stronger and spent days rather than minutes in complete control. It blackened the room, and it sent sickly black threads down the halls. It would quietly put Patton to sleep and lock Roman in his room, and take the control board all to himself.

At the time, Logan had been persistent, desperate to stay on the board and It had… not taken kindly to that persistence. It tried locking Logan in his room, tried gagging him like Patton, tried distracting him. None of it worked. Logan was too clever. He worked his way free back to the board each and every time.

So it was only fitting that Logan would be the one to leave Virgil here. After all, it was a place like this that it sent Logan to all those years ago.

He could still picture Logan’s face in his mind perfectly. He’d been terrified and for once it showed on his face. Virgil had been screaming and screaming and banging against the walls of his own body, but it was on fire and it wasn’t letting go anytime soon.

“Time to sleep, logic,” it said with both its own voice and Virgil’s.

“P-Please,” Logan begged. He clung to his arm, several heads shorter than Virgil. “Brother, please.”

Virgil’s soul tore in two and screamed again, and his fingers twitched, just enough to loosen its hold on Logan.

But the hole was already open and it quickly pulled back so that Virgil couldn’t stop it, and Logan fell from their grasp. Down, down, down through the darkness.

A rush of fury slammed through Virgil’s mind. This wasn’t fair! This wasn’t right! He screamed and clawed and bit and suddenly, something broke.

All at once, Virgil was sprawled on the floor, breathless and exhausted and broken but… he could move. He could move his own body. Nearly sobbing in relief, Virgil scrambled to the hole in the floor it had somehow created and shouted down the hole. He screamed for Logan, but even as he did, the hole grew smaller and soon completely disappeared.

He’d panicked. He’d panicked and trashed the entire control room. He shouted as many obscene words as he could think off at the monster that dared take advantage of him like this. It dared hurt his friends. His brothers. And as he screamed he tore apart the walls and flew through hallways and dashed down doors, searching for the rest of them. It was a display of telekinesis he had yet to demonstrate once more. But at the time, he’d hardly registered it. He needed his family and he needed them now.

He found Patton and Roman relatively quickly, and he had been both crushed and elated by their mixed expressions of fear and relief. Fear that he had returned. Relief that he did not look as he had before.

Finding Logan had taken more time.

Much more time.

In fact, Patton had maned the control board for ages as he and Roman dove again and again into Thomas’s subconscious to retrieve him.

In Patton and Roman’s defense, neither of them asked questions about his sudden change of heart, or questioned his motives. They were good at reading people, he supposed. And he had been anything but alright with that he had just done when he came to release them. They knew he had screwed up and that he knew that. He couldn’t tell them why he had done it (it wouldn’t let him even if it was stuck inside him for now) but they were grateful either way.

But… none of them ever trusted him the same. Even Patton took months to stop flinching at any casual touches and much longer before he would hug him again. Roman was always cold.

They found Logan eventually.

And when he returned, he did not speak of the place he had been. Not once. In fact, he often acted as if it had never happened.

But he hated Virgil from that day forward and there was nothing Virgil could do about that. It had been well over a decade ago, and It only made occasional appearances, but profuse apologies afterward could not exactly erase anything it made him do.

The whole situation sucked. It sucked ass and that was just it.

Virgil hugged his arms to himself and pushed away from the memories. Okay. Maybe this was his punishment. This was what he deserved. Maybe if he stayed here long enough he would just get absorbed or something. He’d get pulled into Thomas’s subconscious and not have to deal with any of this. He wouldn’t keep screwing up if he was reduced to base functions. Buttons and chemicals.

That sounded super scary but…

A chill ran up his back, and Virgil froze.

Of course, it was too good to be true to think he could enjoy his nothingness hell alone. No, the thing had to be here too.

It had a hand made of bone, and it gently wrapped its fingers around the back of Virgil’s neck. I think we get out of here, yes.

“Not with you, asshole,” Virgil spit, pulling away. He clamped down on the lid of the mental box he kept it in, and the hand retreated.

“Logan!” he shouted again. “Logan, please come back!” No! Wait, no that was a horrible idea. “Never mind!” he screamed, even though he knew Logan wouldn’t hear him. Logan must have figured a way out. Like last time. After all, it was Logan who found his way home before. He could do it again. “Lock the damn door! And I’m not joking! This isn’t even sarcasm!” A weak laugh escaped him. “For once, you freaking nerd!”

No one came. Which… was expected. Instead, It rattled on the box in its cage and Virgil hissed in pain. He gasped and crouched to the floor. “Don’t,” he managed to gritted teeth. “Leave me alone,”

I think… no.

The box cracked open and the doors rattled, and Virgil curled tighter. Maybe if he figured out how to just disappear around now he could stop this?

Logan would figure out how to get Thomas back. Yeah. It would… all be good.

They didn’t need him. Logan knew what he was doing. He always knew what he was going.

Unlike you, obviously.

Why was it that he had the resident demonic monster?

Said demonic monster sniffed at him, almost offended. Excuse you, I am a beautiful disaster.

“Screw it,” Virgil growled. He forced himself to his feet shakily and extended his hands to the sky (or whatever the heck it was above him) “Okay! Great and mighty psyche! Absorb me or whatever! Do your juice! Eat me up! I’m freaking done!” His voice and resolve cracked on the last sentence and he swallowed thickly. “…Please.”

Nothing.

Except for the chuckling demon behind his ear. No one hears you. Just me. Me and you, buddy. Two and one packages forever, yeah?

Virgil’s hands dropped to his sides, and the box burst open.

He didn’t have a chance to reply. Because, all at once, he was the one in the box, watching through his own eyes as he felt his body grow taller and thinner. Purple light shined into the darkness and revealed nothing. It chuckled and flexed Virgil’s hand. “Two times in one day, Anx? Gosh, it’s like you’re finally weak enough again. Getting weaker too. It’s… well, I mean, honestly, it’s wonderful.”

Virgil’s heart thudded in his throat. It was going to find a way out of here. And this time it wasn’t going to keep any of the sides around. It would put them all in here and throw away the key, and as soon as it figured out how to get rid of Virgil, it would do that as well.

“That sums it up nicely,” It said. “So… I guess there’s no point in monologuing or whatever villains are supposed to do. Let’s just get to it!”

It raised a hand and its finger lit with purple lightning. Slowly, it cut a line of purple light down the darkness in front of them. Satisfied, It stepped back and watched as the hole grew wider.

That would not take it back to the control room. No, It didn’t know the way and it would take awhile to find its way through the layers, but it would do it. Eventually. Just as Logan had.

Virgil gave another shove but It didn’t even respond. Despair racked claws down Virgil’s throat, and if he could, he would have cried. It closed the box tighter around Virgil and stepped through the hoop of light into an equally dark room. One layer closer to Virgil’s brothers. One layer closer to Thomas.

“Don’t move, jackass,” said a voice.

Shock rippled down Virgil’s spine, and It spun around to face the voice, equally shocked.

And there in the darkness was a red hoop, forced open by a pair of hands. Crouched beneath those hands was a familiar form.

Forms, rather.

“Thomas!” Roman shrieked. But Thomas pushed past him into the room. Inside the hoop, both Patton and Logan were babbling and trying to get to Thomas, but the hoop was growing smaller and smaller by the second. “GET BACK HERE!”

Thomas ignored him and Virgil’s brain screamed. Every atom in him was demanded that he get Thomas away from this.

But he couldn’t.

Instead, he stood there as Thomas walked up to him, something unreadable in his eyes. “Get out of him,” Thomas hissed.

It blinked, shocked again. Thomas knew. How the heck did he know?

“Come to play with the big boys, Tommy?”

“I said, get out of him!” And then Thomas did something completely unexpected. Maybe it was because his sense of self-preservation was currently a prisoner, but Thomas rushed forward, and before anyone could react, slammed his hands into Its chest.

And shoved it back. Out and behind Virgil.

Virgil fell forward, right into his arms and Thomas caught him clumsily. Thomas’s face suddenly went white. “Oh… oh my god, I just…”

“The hoop…”

Roman was struggling to hold it open. He had a foot on the bottom and both hands shook as he held it. “I DON’T HAVE ALL FREAKING DAY, DIPSHITS.”

There was a great cold swirling in the darkness that Virgil knew had been the creature inside him before now. He grabbed Thomas’s arm and scrambled toward the hoop. “Run!”

They ran. Closer and closer.

And jumped through the hoop.

The moment they were through, hands were all over them. Their voices wound together and folded in a jangling mess Virgil didn’t even bother trying to untangle, he stayed there, flopped on the floor until someone shook his shoulder. He lifted his head and noted that they were back in the control room.

Thomas. Thomas’s warmth spread from his fingertips and whatever cold still lingered, it fled from Virgil. He wanted to cry. Wasn’t that just embarrassing?

Instead, he managed a gulp. “T-thank you.”

“I don’t understand,” Roman interjected. “What the heckity heck just happened?”

Virgil blinked tiredly at the other sides. If it wasn’t for Thomas’s hand on his shoulder, he wouldn’t even be sitting up. He was so tired. But… it was a good tired. A sort of tired he had not felt in a very long time.

His eyes landed on Logan, who had That Look on his face. He got it. He finally freaking got it. He was staring at Virgil with this mix of confusion and horror and pain.

Virgil didn’t care about anything else. Logan understood. That was all he needed. He’d… he’d never thought he would.

“That wasn’t Virgil,” Logan said. His voice was very quiet, but everyone fell silent immediately.

Virgil choked.

“What do you mean?”

“He means, that was clearly not Virgil,” Thomas supplied. His hand tightened on his shoulder. He almost sounded… angry. “That thing, couldn’t you see it? It was puppeteering him. Like he was a fucking suit! And none of you noticed.”

The sides said nothing. He watched each oh shit moment as it finally dawned on Patton and Roman. Guilt. Relief. More guilt.

“Thank god,” Patton breathed. “I thought… I hoped…”

Virgil tried a weak smile. “S’k…” he slurred.

Thomas pursed his lips. “No. It’s not.”

But Virgil couldn’t stay awake any longer. His head dropped to his chest and the world tunneled.

And despite all that, Virgil was happier than he had been in years.


	4. Chapter 4

He woke up groggily like he had been sleeping in a block of cement. The sensation was unfamiliar. He had never slept for longer than thirty minutes at a time, and always very lightly. So forcing open his eyes after what felt like hours was completely novel.

Nice, though. He was wrapped in something warm, curled up… on the floor.

In the distance, he could hear people arguing. Their voices were wind chimes shrieking against each other in a storm, and Virgil winced. What was going on?

He caught a few words. His name was one of them. Virgil… the door… we can’t…

Were they arguing about him? That was pretty typical, so he wasn’t too bothered, but… there were more than three voices. A fourth one was arguing as well. And that was weird. Right?

He forced open his eyes and sat up, rubbing his hair out of his eyes and probably smearing whatever remained of his mascara all over the place. He had to look like a dead raccoon but he really couldn’t be bothered. Virgil yawned and blinked lazily at the fuzzy group of people arguing at the control board across the room. Virgil was in his corner, he realized. Someone had tucked him here with some blankets and a pillow (both were usually in Patton’s corner). He took a deep breath, and it felt good. He was taking his first deep breath in a very long time.

He slowly unwound himself from the blanket as the voices grew more heated. Louder and louder until someone broke from the group and stormed away.

Virgil blinked a few times, and his vision settled.

The voices quieted, and he could now see Patton, Roman, and Logan standing at the control board in various states of disgruntlement.

They looked up when he approached, and Patton smiled tiredly. “Hey, kiddo. You’re awake.”

“Yup.” Virgil scratched his head and yawned and chose to ignore the tension floating around the room. He felt nice right now. Like, really good. And he wasn’t going to let whatever the others were weird about bring him down. “Is there coffee around here?”

Logan and Roman stared at him.

And… kept staring.

It was getting weird now. Virgil raised an eyebrow. “What?”

Roman cocked his head. “You look different.”

Virgil frowned. “… Good or bad different?”

“Just… different?” Roman flicked his wrist and a little mirror was suddenly floating in front of his face. Virgil grabbed the (stupidly ordinate) mirror out of the air and stared at his face in surprise.

I mean… I’m not complaining.

It was like looking back in time; back when Thomas was a kid and Virgil had been the boss. Back before everything got messy and he got messy. His hair was still in his face, per usual, but his eyes were not as dark and the makeup he usually applied to hide the large bags under his eyes was not only not present, but unnecessary. He, for the first time in years, didn’t look like he was on the verge of an emotional breakdown. He was well rested. Calm.

He was calm… ish.

How on earth was that even possible?

“Huh,” he murmured. “I guess It was having more effect than I thought.”

The silence got heavier, and Virgil registered what he had just said. He could speak about it now? He could tell them! His heart flipped in his chest. “I-I…” How could he explain this? How could he ever put it into words?

It’s too late, a voice in him whispered. He had screwed up for too long.

He slowly lowered the mirror, and it dissolved as he did so. “Are you guys… okay?”

They were all standing there. Staring. It was making his skin crawl. Maybe he should just go. He should go back to his corner and avoid screwing anything else up. Yeah. That was a good idea.

He started a step back, but suddenly Patton sniffed. Virgil glanced at him, and Patton barrelled forward, right into Virgil’s chet. He wrapped his arms tightly around him, and Virgil went as still as stone. He was touching him. Patton was holding him.

“I missed you so much!”

Something in that broke Virgil a bit. He was… too much. “Ow. Ow, Pat. I’m still a bit-”

“Oh! Sorry!” Patton jerked back and patted him very gently on his head. Virgil smiled softly.

“S’okay.”

Patton had missed him? Had he really been so different with It inside him?

Then again, he couldn’t even remember the last conversation he had that had not been an argument. So maybe Patton was onto something. Even when it hadn’t been in control, It was always thrumming in the background, stealing every ounce of energy he had.

Patton’s impromptu embrace seemed to have broken whatever trance the others were in. They both relaxed marginally, and Logan glanced up at the screen behind him. Logan had yet to look fully at Virgil, and honestly, Virgil hadn’t expected anything else. The screen was still blank, although the hole he had fallen through was gone. Good news and bad news, he supposed. “We’re still not awake.”

“No,” Roman replied. He stepped up and looked Virgil up and down. “We’re working on it. Logan has some ideas. Are you feeling alright?”

“Great, actually.”

Roman smiled and hit him on the shoulder, probably harder than he intended. “I’m glad.”

It would only be a matter of time before It found its way through the layers of Thomas’s subconscious. It would find its way back here, and Virgil would have to give up this bit of peace. But for now, It was gone and Virgil could not be more grateful that Thomas had figured it out.

And on that note… “Where’s Thomas?”

The three of them instantly sobered. Patton picked at the sleeves of his cardigan, which he was actually wearing for once. “He’s…”

Well, that was super encouraging. “Guys. What the hell?”

Roman shrugged. “We were arguing and he was angry and so he ran off.”

He… ran off. Virgil stared at them. “And you just let him go?”

“It’s not like he can go far. There are not any doors.”

Okay, that was a good point. But Virgil glanced around the room and his stomach dropped. Seeds of panic swirled in his brain, but he quickly shut them down. He needed to concentrate. He could not help Thomas if he panicked.

Huh.

How long had it been since he even had the ability to stop panicking? His mental housemate loved panic. It devoured it, cultivated it, and chuckled when Virgil started drowning.

“Thomas isn’t in here.”

The other sides looked around and they paled; even Logan. Roman quietly fisted his hair, eyes wide. “Shit…”

That was one word for it. They all scrambled away from the control board, calling his name. Maybe he was just in the shadows avoiding them.

No.

No, Thomas wasn’t in the room.

Virgil carefully kept stopping, forcing his heart rate down, forcing himself to breathe. He was alright. He was okay. Thomas was okay. He had to be.

“Thomas!” Roman shouted. He flew through Patton’s corner, throwing stuffed animals left and right. Virgil highly doubted Thomas was hiding in a pile of plush Disney characters, but he understood the sentiment.

In another corner, Patton was feeling down the walls where doors used to be. Logan was at the control board again, babbling to himself and desperately trying to get anything to come back online. “If he woke up, then the screen would be working but the screen is not working, thus he must still be in here somewhere, which presses the question…”

“Great. Wonderful job. I sleep for five seconds and you manage to lose our conscious mind!”

“That isn’t necessary, Virgil,” Patton said with forced cheerfulness. And he was right.

“Still.”

Virgil joined Patton at the wall where the hallway toward their individual rooms used to be. He felt along the edges. Nothing. It was solid. “Maybe Roman can make a portal?”

Patton nodded. “Roman! Portal?” Roman didn’t respond. “Roman!”

Roman looked up from the stuffed animals. “Sorry! Got distracted.”

And despite the situation, a little bubble of amusement came up Virgil’s throat. Here they were trying to find their own goddamn consciousness and creativity couldn’t stay focused long enough to ignore some toys on the floor. Roman jogged toward the wall and stared at it. “Even if I did make a portal like I did earlier, we have no idea where he ended up. It would take ages.”

“We don’t have ages.”

Roman frowned. “What? There’s a time limit?”

Oh. Did they not realize? Virgil nodded. “It’s going to come back. It’s making its way through Thomas’s subconscious and we need Thomas to be out of here when It gets here.”

Roman blanched. “You mean… the you, the you you are when you’re mad-”

Virgil sighed. “That’s not me. It was never me. It got… inside me somehow a long time ago and would sort of take over the wheel when I let down my guard.” Saying it out loud felt so strange. It was awkward, almost, but there wasn’t time for that. Now Roman was looking even more horrified.

Patton squeezed his shoulder. “Oh, buddy…”

Yeah. No. No time for this. Virgil shrugged his arm off. “Whatever. It’s gone for now so until it gets back, we need to-”

The floor shook and the lights blinked on and off and on again.

“Is… is that It?” Patton whispered once the floor steadied.

Virgil’s lips hardened into a tight line, and he didn’t need to answer, they could see it on his face.

“What is it?” Patton whispered.

“I don’t know,” Virgil chewed on his fingernails. How he would like to. He had some ideas, of course, but It had never volunteered a name, much less a title. “Thomas could only have gotten out of here if there was a door. We can assume he was furious- why was he angry again?”

Roman’s eyes dropped to the floor. “He was angry that we had not noticed what he considered… obvious. About It, ya know.”

Virgil blinked. Oh. He supposed it made sense that Thomas would figure it out since he was all of them and Virgil knew, but it still did not explain why he would be as angry as to actually run away. He didn’t even know Virgil. He shouldn’t care that much.

Virgil cleared his throat. “Either way, what does Thomas usually do when he’s angry?”

Roman and Patton cocked their heads. Patton shrugged. “I mean… it depends on how angry. After a certain point… it kinda goes out of my hands.”

This was news to Virgil. He didn’t realize that was possible. “But you’re the core of his feelings.”

Patton shrugged again and the floor shook. “Exactly. The Core. I am a middle ground between all of the feelings. If a feeling is too intense, it throws me off balance. So, I have to pass it off.”

“Pass it off to whom?”

Virgil, Patton, and Roman looked at the speaker in surprise. They hadn’t heard him come up, and Virgil hadn’t expected him to join in any conversation for quite awhile.

Logan pretended to not notice. He coughed, slightly awkwardly, and snuck a quick glance at Virgil before reverting to looking at Patton.

And something relaxed a bit in Virgil’s stomach. Logan wasn’t mad at him. He hadn’t even realized he was worried about that, but he was. He was terrified that Logan wasn’t ever going to forgive him.

But here Logan was, stuttering into a conversation.

It was something. And maybe Logan would never talk to him again, but at least he was talking. That was all Virgil could ask for; it was more than he could ask for.

“Again, Patton, to whom are you passing these emotions off to?”

Patton opened and closed his mouth. “I… I don’t know.” This was not a good thing and he could see Patton realizing this. He paled and his lip quivered. “I should know that…”

“How can you not know?”

Patton snapped out of it, and his eyes flashed. “It’s not a simple process, Roman!”

“It’s a feeling! It can’t be that complicated!”

“Are we going to do this again? I win this argument every time, you little-”

The floor heaved, and this time bookshelves fell. The floor swirled and waved and the Sides scrambled to grab for things to hold to, shrieking. “It’s getting closer!” Patton yelped.

“What does Thomas do when he’s angry?” Logan repeated Virgil’s question as he clung to a bookshelf, a failing attempt to keep it upright. He finally met his eyes.

And what was in them shocked Virgil to his very core. He looked devastated. Terrified. And horribly, horribly guilty.

Logan… Logan was feeling guilty? That was completely unwarranted! Virgil was the one who had screwed up. He was the one that was weak enough to let It inside. Logan had only responded accordingly.

The floor kept up a constant little vibration, but Virgil forced himself to not think about it. Logan had directed the question at him. As if Virgil knew the answer.

Why would Virgil know the answer?

It clicked suddenly in his mind. It was obvious.“He runs,” Virgil said. “He runs away from everyone so that he doesn’t do something he’d regret”

Virgil knew this because each and every time Thomas had been horribly furious, Patton would grab Virgil off of the control board and slap sense into him until Virgil had enough strength to reach past It and use the keys to get away from the situation. But he could never quite force It to let Patton back to the board.

That didn’t make sense. Why was Virgil controlling the keys when Thomas was angry? That wasn’t his job. That was Patton’s job. It was always Patton’s job.

Except, Patton said that he was giving extreme emotions away. He didn’t control them. He could not be morality and every emotion and innocence at the same time.

“When Thomas is furious, he runs out of the situation and-”

“-comes up with stories.” Roman interrupted. “He thinks about projects. He theorizes about movies. Anything to keep from imagining…” Roman’s eyes glazed and fell to the floor. “whatever it was that he wanted to do.”

It was their failsafe. It was the defense system they had against Virgil.

Or… whatever Virgil was when Virgil couldn’t control his own body. Patton would beg Virgil while Logan slipped back to the controls and as soon as Virgil managed to press a button to bail, they would lock It up and Roman would take control.

So where would Thomas automatically go if he was angry at all of them?

Roman’s room.

They all quickly turned to Roman, who nodded. “I’ll try to get through.” The floor shook a little more and dust fell from the ceiling. Roman closed his eyes, breathed in and out, and slowly lifted a dagger in the air.

Reflexively, Patton grabbed Virgil’s hand, and Virgil was sure not going to pull away. He squeezed back and chewed his lip.

Roman’s eyes opened. They were glowing yellow. He drew down the empty air, and a molten line of red light carved a scar through it. They backed away from the heat and a moment later, Roman used his fingers to pull it open.

The floor rattled and jangled and suddenly cracked. They needed to get out of here. There wasn’t time to see if Roman had gotten to the right place. A tight hand on Patton, Virgil offered a hand to Logan, who, to Virgil’s shock, took it without any more hesitation than a few fluttering blinks.

As pieces of the ceiling began to crack, Virgil flung them through the portal, only looking back to make sure Roman made it through as well.

They crashed to the floor in a heap, all four of them, and the portal disappeared with the sound of a zipper closing, and everything was very still.

“Um, guys,” Patton squeaked. “someone’s elbow is trying to kill me.”

Roman groaned and rolled off of them all. “Sorry! You know what they say, falling with style and all…”

“Where did my glasses go?”

Virgil picked them off the grass and handed Logan his glasses. Logan took them and blinked at him once he had them back on his face. “T-thanks.”

“Uh, huh.”

Logan quickly ducked away, and Virgil was left looking after him. Why was he being so weird?

They were standing in an open, African plain dotted with occasional crooked trees. The night sky was lit with ribbons of stars above them. Bugs buzzed in the grass and a soft wind brushed past. It was wild and complex and miraculous and so large, it made Virgil feel like he was only inches tall.

“Woah,” Patton breathed. “Roman, this is…”

“Neat, huh?” Roman answered with a smirk. “I made it when I was acting out the Lion King, and decided I liked it enough to keep it for my room.”

“You acted out that all by yourself?”

“Yup!”

At one point, Virgil might have watched him rehearse. He might have even practiced with him if only to avoid looking like an idiot when the show came. But Virgil hadn’t practiced with Roman in… gosh, it had been ages.

“How are we supposed to find Thomas in here?”

Virgil wrapped his arms around himself and scanned the dark plain. “He can’t have gotten far.”

“Alrighty then.” Patton clapped his hands together. “How long do you think we have before, uh, It shows up?”

Virgil repressed a shiver and shrugged. “Not long. Twenty minutes, maybe?”

Roman cursed quietly and Logan pinched between his eyes. “It would be of benefit to split up. I will go with Roman-”

“No,” Patton interrupted. “I’ll go with Roman. You and Virgil check down there by those trees and me and Roman will go the other way.” There was indeed a small cropping of trees down a little hill threaded by a stream.

Logan stared at Patton, apparently at loss for words. Virgil rolled his eyes. Patton wasn’t stupid. He was eerily perceptive, actually. And he was smiling ‘oh so innocently.’ “I… suppose,” Logan managed.

Patton beamed and slung an arm around a (slightly startled) Roman. They started away and Logan and Virgil were left in the empty field with nothing but the whispering wind between them.

Virgil broke the silence first. He sighed and rubbedthe back of his neck. “They did that on purpose.”

Logan gave him an affirmative noise and glanced down at the trees. “We should search for Thomas.”

Of course. Yeah. That was why they were here, after all. Shoving his hands into his pockets, Virgil ducked his head and started walking, Logan close beside him.

They reached the trees and they were much taller than Virgil had imagined from a distance. Dark and shadowed with limbs that stretched umbrella-like above to block out the sky. Virgil shivered. He didn’t like it in here. No. No, going in here would be a bad idea. Something in the wind set him on edge. The way the bark looked. The slightly muddy earth. Or… something. Okay, so he didn’t know what exactly it was, but this place was not a place he wished to occupy for any length of time.

“Well. Looks like Thomas isn’t here-”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Logan interrupted. He squinted into the darkness. Apparently, he did not sense the foreboding weight as Virgil did.

Then again, Virgil pretty much always felt a ‘foreboding weight’ and for the most part, it was illogical.

Right. If Logan did not see it, then it was indeed illogical.

“We cannot possibly be certain that Thomas is not within this small group of trees. It is far too dark.”

“Uh huh.”

“I am correct.”

“You are.”

Logan raised an eyebrow at him. But he couldn’t keep his eye contact, Virgil noted again. He was not as okay as he was pretending to be.

And Virgil didn’t need to bother him with more stupid anxiety. Clearing his throat, Virgil nodded and stepped farther into the forest. One step and then another and another. Logan was still just beside him.

The temperature soared within a few moments and Virgil resisted the urge to unzip his hoodie. He was already sweating and the humidity was suddenly so thick, a fish could have swum in the air. Around them, shadows of contorted shapes twisted like the bars of a cage and dull star light leaked between those bars.

“Virgil,” Logan said.

Virgil unzipped his hoodie halfway and swiped his bangs out of his eyes. “Yeah?”

For a long time, Logan didn’t answer. They kept walking, calling out of Thomas, eyes scanning the darkness. It was only after Logan stepped on a particularly loud twig that Logan seemed to remember he had initiated a conversation. “I, em…”

Was he alright? Virgil glanced at him and then stopped. “Yo, Logan, whatever man. I’m not expecting you to like, do anything. I was horrible to you and you responded accordingly so…”

Logan’s eyes flashed. “I did not know. That… that It was not you. You never made it known to me. Why did you not tell me?”

Virgil stared at him. That was his question? Not ‘why did you let this monster in’ not, ‘what kind of idiot lets himself get possessed’? Just… why didn’t you tell me?

Virgil had no idea what to think.

“I couldn’t,” Virgil murmured. “It wouldn’t let me.”

He didn’t want to keep talking about it. Soon enough, It would be back and he would have to deal with him for the rest of however long he had until It got rid of him. He kept walking until he realized Logan was not following him.

He turned.

Logan was standing in the middle of a little space between all of the twisting trees, cleaning his glasses with the bottom of his polo. His hands were shaking. “I… have treated you with not a little animosity.”

Virgil rolled his eyes. “That’s putting it nicely.”

“I’ve been an asshole.”

Virgil blinked.

But it was not as if Logan was to blame. Virgil was the one weak enough to let in a foreign thing inside him. If it had been any of the other sides, Virgil thought he probably would have acted just like Logan.

A brush of cool air skirted the little path they were making and Virgil relaxed slightly at its touch. He needed to get out of this forest. It made his skin crawl.

“Virgil-”

“Look.” Virgil put his hands up, surrender style. “It’s fine. I’m cool. We’re cool. Let’s just get Thomas.” He didn’t wait for a response. He flicked a hand irritably and was pleasantly surprised to see the branches curl away from his touch. He hadn’t been telekinetic in a very long time…

Behind him, Logan’s shoulders slumped, but he followed Virgil obediently. As they were reaching the edge of the forest, the first trembles began to stir the earth. Virgil paused, pursed his lips, and shouted for Thomas all the louder.

“Perhaps we ought to return to the others.”

“Maybe…”

Virgil flicked a hand again and the branches pulled away to reveal an open plain on the other side of the forest. Out of this entire situation, Logan’s shock at that casual display of power made everything more bearable.

“W-when- How long could you-?”

“I can’t do that when It is inside me,” Virgil answered. The ground shook and some leaves from above them fell. They needed to get this figured out. Now. If they could get Thomas out before It came back, at least they would just be in the same situation they were in before any of this happened. Until It figured out how to get rid of the rest of them, that is. Virgil cupped his hands around his mouth. “Thomas!”

Something in the distance moved, and Virgil’s stomach swooped. He was lined up with the horizon, hidden by the night sky. “There!” Virgil grabbed Logan’s sleeve and drug him after him. “I see him!”

Logan’s eyes lit up, and they ran toward Thomas. “Thomas! Patton! Roman! We found him!” Very far away, two figures turned and shot fists in the air before running in their direction.

Virgil reached Thomas first. “T-tom? Buddy, you can’t run off like that.”

Thomas didn’t respond. He was staring resolutely at absolutely nothing, hands limp at his sides. That could not be good. Virgil grabbed his shoulder and shook him slightly. “Thomas.”

Logan reached them now. “What is wrong with him?”

“I don’t know. Thomas, can you hear me?”

No response.

Logan chewed his lips and ran a hand through his hair. “I imagine a prolonged time in the subconscious is unhealthy for the conscious mind.”

Virgil’s eyes widened. “You think it’s hurting him here?”

“Perhaps? Thomas, look at me.” Logan took his other shoulder and shook him.

Very slowly, Thomas blinked. And then he stirred. A shiver passed through him and he looked at Logan, and then Virgil. A frown. “I said not to come after me.”

Logan snorted. “You think just because this is your mind you can simply run through it willy-nilly?”

“Willy-nilly?”

“Hush, Virgil. Thomas, there are dangerous places in here. Dangerous things.”

Thomas took a deep breath and scrubbed his face. “I, uh, yeah. You’re right. Course, you’re right. S-sorry. I just needed… space.” He dropped his hands, and a small smile lit his face when he met Virgil’s eyes. “You’re alright.”

“Thanks to you,” Virgil answered. He smirked. “Kickin’ butt and takin names.”

Thomas snorted. “Whatever. I’m glad you’re better because I got rid of it.”

The ground shook slightly. “About that…” Virgil grimaced. “So, you didn’t get rid of it exactly. Just… Well, honestly I don’t really know what you did, but It’s not in me right now, so that’s the good news, I guess.”

Thomas’s smile faltered. He looked between the two of them. “And there’s bad news…”

“Unfortunately, this situation is temporary,” Logan inserted. In his defense, his tone was soft- softer than he spoke to anyone. “It is finding its way back to us and when it does, you must be long gone.”

Thomas swallowed thickly and quickly stepped away from them.

“Thom-”

“No. No, just… give me a second.” Thomas backed away and wrapped his hands nervously around themselves.

By this time, Patton and Roman had jogged up. They took one look at the situation and sobered. “You told him.”

“He ought to know.”

Thomas’s jaw tightened, and Virgil watched him steel himself. His fists clenched, lips pursed, back straight. But his eyes were quiet and dark and not unlike Virgil’s. “So this thing is going to break into here and what? Possess Virgil again?”

“It is in high probability.”

Patton’s eyes welled up with tears at Logan’s words and Virgil kind of wanted to join the emotional side in that emotion. But he couldn’t break down right now. Instead, he wrapped his arms around himself and tried to convince himself it wasn’t that big of a deal. He’d dealt with It for years. What were more years?

“So is there a plan? What’s going to happen when It comes back?”

The sides glanced at each other, reluctant.

And… as one, they made a silent decision. Virgil smiled at Thomas. A half-effort sort of thing, but a smile nonetheless. “We’ll get you out of here, and it’ll come back. But you pushed it out once. We’ll do the same thing and put it much deeper in the subconscious. A place it can’t escape from.”

Patton shot Virgil a glare, but he said nothing. None of them contradicted him. This was in Thomas’s best interest. “Okay,” Thomas breathed. “So… you send me away…”

“And we use the energy on your escape to lock It away,” Logan finished calmly. He was the picture of tranquility. “Do not worry, Thomas.”

Thomas wavered. He met their eyes individually and none of them hesitated. “How much time?”

A stronger shake of the ground. Virgil wrinkled his nose. “A few minutes.”

“And how exactly am I getting out of here?”

Ah yes. That was a good question. Virgil didn’t have an answer to that.

“I have an idea.”

Virgil’s eyebrows rose. He gave Roman, who had been quiet throughout this conversation, his attention. “We’re all ears.”

Roman nodded, chewing on his lip just as Logan had earlier. “The mindscape is made of layers. Many, many layers of… Thomas. We all have the ability to rip holes into pieces of it, but if we all were to cut in the same place, perhaps it would cut entirely out?”

Thomas grimace at ‘cut’ and ‘rip holes’ but said nothing.

Logan was looking thoughtful, a finger on his lip, eyes narrowed. He nodded. “Yes… I do not know why we did not think of it earlier.

“We were busy arguing,” Patton grumbled.

Logan ignored him. “It is desperate, but desperate times, as they say…” The ground shook much harder, and this time the ground cracked beneath their feet. They grabbed onto each other with wide eyes.

“It’s getting closer.”

There was no time for planning. No preamble or hesitation. Roman quickly pulled out his dagger and drew a long line in the air in the center of the circle they were all loosely making.

Logan stepped forward next and Roman handed him the dagger. Taking it, Logan stabbed the dagger into the floating line of red light, and drug it down to the bottom. As he did so, the red changed from red to purple once the blue light melted into it.

The sky darkened and the wind picked up. The forest just in the distance grumbled and seemed to grow taller, wider, longer.

“Go, Pat!”

Patt stumbled toward the light and fumbled with the knife for a second before managing another line. His yellow light muddied the purple to a muddy brown.

And then it was Virgil’s turn.

But he was frozen, staring at the cracks in the dirt beneath his feet. He could see, under the earth, a molten orange mass churning.

A stupid creature, a voice whispered in his mind, and Virgil choked on nothing.

Before he could even begin to panic, however, someone’s hands were on his shoulders, a hand pushing a knife into his grasp.

Logan. It was Logan. Logan had him by the shoulders, keeping him standing. “Just a bit longer, Virgil,” he said softly. He squeezed his shoulder once and let him go.

Just a bit longer.

It probed at his mind, searching for a way in again. There would be no holding it back. Not for long. Thomas needed to get out of here. Now. Hastily, Virgil stepped toward the rip they were creating and plunged the dagger into the top. He racked in down to the bottom and a great pressure release popped his ears. The light became a dark purple for just a moment before it dissolved into white light. Virgil pulled out the dagger, and as he pulled, the rip became wider and wider.

This would take Thomas home. He could feel it. Back into the real world. “Your turn, Thomas,” Virgil croaked. You’re too late… the voice whispered. Virgil scowled and forced It away.

Thomas breathed shakily. “You guys are sure you’ll be okay once I go?”

“We’ll be fine, Thomas,” Logan said quickly. His eyes were on the dagger in Virgil’s hands, and with a start, Virgil realized his worry. He quickly tossed it to Roman, who kept it in his hands.

It wouldn’t be good to give the enemy a weapon once he arrived.

“Go, Thomas,” Virgil urged. He gestured at the blinding white of the rip. “Please.”

Thomas met his eyes and something melted in them. Before Virgil could think to stop him, Thomas grabbed him and pulled him into a tight hug. His light, warmth, life, sent waves of calm all the way down to Virgil’s toes, and he relaxed. This was why they were doing this. Thomas was the reason. And they would do anything to keep him safe. Even if it meant living in hell and lying to his face about it.

“You do a good job, buddy,” Thomas said into Virgil’s shoulder, and no, those were not tears pricking his eyes. He had a grass allergy. Sheesh.

Thomas let him go and smiled waterily at the other sides. “You all do,”

And with that, he stepped back into the light. Virgil smiled. Thomas would get out of here. He would be safe. They were going to fix this!

But just as Thomas’s silhouette was fading in the white rip, a great roar shook the entire landscape and chilled Virgil to the bone. A hot wind blew down from nowhere in particular and the forest behind them was suddenly all around them, twisting and snickering. No. “Oh gods, no.”

And out of the darkness, a single, smokey hand stretched out. It stretched out into the light of the rip. Virgil screamed and the sides flew forward to push it back.

But instead, another hand came out of the darkness and wrapped around them. Thomas shouted, and It pulled him back into the shadows. At the same time, the smoke slammed into their backs and sent Virgil spinning forward.

Virgil’s stomach dropped. He was shouting. They were all shouting. Screaming and scrambling for something to grab onto, but now the light was pulling them in, stronger than they could resist.

Virgil’s sneakers skidded on the grass and he fell on his face, grabbing at the ground unsuccessfully as he was pulled deeper and deeper into the crack. “NO!”

The last thing Virgil saw was Thomas’s panicked face, screaming as he was pulled into the shadows. A voice was laughing. Cackling in his mind. I don’t need you… I don’t need any of you.

And then Virgil was weightless, flying through the void.

The wind wailed in his ears and he was tumbling up and down and inside out. Stretched and shrunk and scrambled.

All at once, everything was black.

Virgil slammed into something hard enough to bruise and his eyes flashed open reflexively, only to be pulled close again by a great weight he could not control.

Virgil fell unconscious to the sound of a heart monitor beeping wildly.


	5. Chapter 5

Freaking oxygen. What the hell.

Virgil struggled another breath, coughed again, and a hand rested on his shoulder. “It’s okay, baby.”

Mom said something in him. His mom.

“Breathe in, Thomas.”

Virgil’s brain spun. He was so sluggish, but he could manage a breathing exercise. Right?

“And out again. There you go.”

Virgil slowly cracked open his eyes. A blurry form was above him, a hand on his cheek and then patting down the blanket on his chest carefully. “Hey, baby. We’re all here. Your brothers are on their way. Dad’s getting food and your friends are going to be here soon. How do you feel?”

Virgil tried to sit up, but his ribs sent shots of pain through him, and he froze. “Um,” he croaked. “I, uh, I’m… feel like I was hit by a… a truck.”

Something was wrong with this situation. Really, really wrong. But he couldn’t quite remember what.

His vision settled while his mother chuckled. She looked so tired. God, what had he done to her? How long had she been awake? How long had he been asleep?

“You…” He squinted.

What was he saying again?

“You should… go to the… the bed.”

His mom smiled. “I will, baby. I’m so glad you’re awake. It’s been a few days. We were a little scared, but it’s okay, isn’t it now? You’re awake. The doctor is going to come check you out.”

Her eyes were sparkling. Crying. Tears. Oh. Why was she crying? “Don’t cry, mom,” he said.

Then there was another person. He had cold hands. A low voice that rumbled.

And after, Virgil was alone.

There were people, in and out, talking, laughing, whispering, touching.

When they were all gone, Virgil was alone again in the hospital bed, staring dully out of a window at the setting sun. His chest tightened at the thought of night and dark and being alone.

It was that fear that gave him a moment of clarity, and in that moment, he realized why everything felt so wrong.

He stilled and sunk deeper into the blankets. Next to him, the heart monitor sped up. No. he needed to stay calm otherwise someone would come to check on him. Virgil inhaled, counted, and exhaled.

“This isn’t supposed to happen,” he mumbled. And no amount of breathing could stem the panic he felt right then. This isn’t happening!

Where were the others? Were they still… inside Thomas? Inside Virgil. However this worked. He was in the real world. The real world.

Virgil forced himself to sit up, eyes wide. His head spun and his vision tunneled, but he didn’t pass out so… yay. He needed to get out of here. Right now. He didn’t have all of Thomas’s memories, just the ones where Thomas had needed his help. Otherwise, he was avoiding the control board. Someone was going to figure it out and they would think Thomas had gone crazy and… and… maybe they had gone crazy. This was not supposed to happen. Ever.

Virgil hissed when he unplugged himself from the variety of tubes. The needles sent shivers of terror down his spine, but he tucked that away. The heart monitor started to wail and he quickly slammed a hand on the off button to stop it. Doctors would run in here any second. Virgil carefully swung his/Thomas’s/whatever’s legs over the side and paused in astonishment at the feeling of the cool tile beneath his feet.

Who knew reality felt so… solid. He stood shakily, froze to make sure he didn’t fall over (he didn’t) and then with a satisfied nod, he took a step forward. And another one.

Running feet in the hallway made his ears perk up, and he ducked into the bathroom, locking the door behind him instinctively. People entered his little hospital room and someone knocked on the door. “You in there, Thomas?” said an unfamiliar voice.

“Tell them who you are,” said another voice, this time from behind Virgil.

Virgil spun around dizzily, heart pounding, and was met face to face with his own face in the mirror.

Thomas. It was Thomas’s face. He was pale and thinner than he ought to be with a bruise on his forehead and another on his chin along with stitches across his eyebrow.

The knocking was louder, but Virgil ignored it. He was entranced. He could feel his heartbeat. He could feel each breath he drew in. Real blood in his veins. Real air.

He raised his hand, and Thomas’s hand in the mirror raised as well. “This is… bad,” Virgil whispered.

“That’s an understatement.”

Virgil blinked.

And out from behind Thomas, peaked another face. A whole person. He was wearing a bright orange suit and a snarky grin, his teeth perfectly straight and unnaturally white. “Hello, little boy,” not-Thomas said.

Virgil looked behind him, but there was no one there. His gaze snapped back to the mirror. “Who are you?”

Not-Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Who do you think, idiot? With you out of the way, who do you think is piloting this craft, hmm?”

A deep-seated dread sank into Virgil’s gut. He slammed his hands into the mirror, furious. “If you hurt my friends-”

“You’ll what?” It shrugged and stuck out his lip. “You’re stuck as the conscious mind! Not quite what I intended, but I mean, whatever works, am I right? Your friends are elsewhere, and then it’ll just be me and you, buddy! Ready to rule the world!”

Virgil stared at him. Into his dead eyes. “What are you?”

“Virgil! How rude! You don’t just go around asking people what they are!”

“I’m past being polite, you mother-”

“Language! That’s my department, thanks!” It wiped the non-existent dust off its suit and smiled at him. “Don’t fuck with me.”

Virgil was gripping the sides of the mirror so tightly, his knuckles were white. “Put me back. Put me back inside and leave us alone.”

It rolled its eyes. “No. I think not.” It extended a hand as if Virgil could shake it. “Name’s Dorian, and I’m the only one with actual sense around here.”

That had to be the most ridiculous thing Virgil had ever heard. He kept asking, but Virgil thought he knew what this… this Dorian or whatever was. “You’re anger.”

Dorian’s eyes flashed, and he came very close to the mirror, staring directly into Virgil’s eyes. “Anger, pride, fury, jealousy, disgust, etc. It doesn’t really matter. I’m keeping Thomas’s body alive, no thanks to the rest of you. Oh! I’ve got a treat for you.” Virgil did not like the sound of that. Dorian snapped his fingers, and suddenly, another figure appeared next to Dorian. Virgil’s breath completely left him, and Dorian smiled happily. “Look here! And for half price, we have a half-ass conscious mind who is slowly going insane from his imprisonment!”

Virgil slammed his fist into the glass. “Let him go!”

Thomas was beaten and bloody, his face swollen and a tooth missing. He swayed on his feet, and Dorian rolled his eyes. “Piss off, dipshit. Let the adults talk, okay?”

Thomas blinked.

And he was gone.

“No! Bring him back!” Virgil shouted at the mirror. “Don’t hurt him!”

“Who? Thomas? Thomas is useless. Me and you on the other hand?” Dorian sighed. “We might actually make an okay team eventually. New management is taking up shop. For our own good, after all. What do ya think? All hail the underdogs, yeah?”

Virgil’s thoughts sparked and zipped around. Where were the others? How could he possibly fix this? “Give Thomas back!” he screamed at Dorian. He slammed his fist against the mirror again, and this time, to Virgil’s shock, the mirror cracked.

Dorian merely winced. “Oh, dear…”

And the door burst open behind Virgil.

Virgil swung around, eyes wide. Two nurses, a doctor, and his dad were standing there, all very concerned.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” Dorian whispered. “This is awkward isn’t it?”

But Virgil couldn’t think. He had no idea how to explain this. He was standing here, yelling at himself and punching a mirror.

His vision tunneled, and someone lept forward to catch him before the world encased him in black.

 

When he woke up again, he was back in the bed.

And there was a familiar form slumped in the armchair next to him. They were curled up in a large coat that Virgil thought belonged to Thomas’s dad, and their nose was pressed up into the base of their palm, probably unintentionally.

Virgil dropped his head back onto the pillow and exhaled. The action hadn’t felt particularly loud, but Joan stirred and blinked. They rubbed their eyes and smiled sleepily at Virgil when they saw Virgil’s open eyes. “Ey look. He’s awake.”

“Unfortunately.”

Joan frowned. They sat up and yawned. “You… you okay?”

No. Virgil was far from okay. He’d officially broken his own mind, not to mention he felt horrible physically. “I’m fine.”

“Ah. The dreaded words.”

Virgil forced himself to sit up on his elbows and squinted at them. “How long have you been here?”

A shrug. “A few hours. Your mom wouldn’t go home unless someone stayed with you.”

Something in Virgil soothed. That was good. Thomas’s mom should sleep. Virgil’s mom. Their mom. Whatever.

“Anyway, I figured you’d be bored out of your mind so I brought some stuff.” Joan dug into a backpack at their feet. They pulled out several DVDs and spread them across the baby blue not-nearly-thick-enough hospital blanket. A few Disney movies and some others. The first season of Friends, the last season of Lost, the Last Airbender, etc.

Virgil cocked his head at Joan and nodded once, certain. Yes, he approved of Joan. Joan was a good friend for Thomas.

But… he couldn’t do this right now. He needed to fix this.

Virgil tried to sit straighter and groaned accidentally as a headache washed over him.

“Hey, slow down,” Joan eased. “There’s a button here, I think. I’ll sit the bed up. Don’t move.”

On a second note, moving was seeming less and less possible. Virgil settled into the bed as it came up to meet him. He chewed his lip. Okay. Plan B. If he couldn’t get out of here, he’d just have to lay low. He’d pretend to be Thomas so that no one thought he was crazy. Right.

“Um,” He scrubbed his face and winced. “Just put on whatever… thanks.”

Joan’s eyes narrowed. They looked Virgil up and down before nodding and prying open one of the cases. Virgil got a glimpse of the cover and almost choked.

“Ah… actually, no, not that one. Any of them but that one.”

Joan clicked the video shut. “What’s wrong with Inside Out?”

It would have been funny maybe. Someday he might look back and chuckle at this situation. But right now he was just… so tired of all of this. “I’ve seen it a lot lately.”

Joan shrugged and stuck in BBC Sherlock. “This good?”

“Fine.”

As the opening titles began, Joan pulled the chair closer to Virgil’s bed and rested their head on the side of the bed. They exhaled, long and tired, and Virgil pretended to not notice them glancing at him every few seconds.

Virgil was near to falling asleep, vaguely noting John Watson shouting at Sherlock on a rooftop.

“I like the hot one.”

Virgil’s eyes flew open.

And there, sitting on the edge of the bed, was Dorian. Virgil’s blood turned to ice when he smiled at Virgil. “The crazy one.”

Virgil glared. “Those adjectives apply to literally everyone in this show.”

“Moriarty, then.”

“You friggin would.”

Dorian chuckled. “I could give it a whirl, you think?” He snapped his fingers, and suddenly Jim Moriarty was sitting near Virgil’s feet. He winked. Virgil wasn’t amused.

“Anything is better than the traffic cone.”

Instantly, Moriarty melted back into Dorian and his nearly-glowing orange suit. “Excuse you. This is fashion. You should try it!” He looked down at his suit, and tutted at a little red splotch on the front. “Damn it. Blood, nearly impossible to avoid…”

Virgil’s stomach flipped. Dorian was good at this. He was good at pretending. Virgil shouldn’t talk to him. Maybe if he avoided him, he would go away. He obviously wasn’t going to be helpful anytime soon, and until Virgil figured out how to fix this, there was no reason to continue feeding into him.

“Thomas?” said a soft voice. “Thomas, who are you talking to?”

Dorian snorted and shrugged innocently. “Oh dear, you’re really not good at this, are you?”

Virgil had forgotten Joan was sitting there. How on earth had he forgotten? He pasted on a blank look, even though he knew it was too late to hide his panic. He turned to Joan, who was looking… really concerned. Great. “Hmm? Nothing. Just thinking out loud.”

Joan was unconvinced. They cleared their throat. “I, um, I heard about that thing in the bathroom this morning, Thomas. You… you know you can tell me anything, right?”

Virgil’s brain spun. “I was really drugged, Joan. Still am. It was… I honestly don’t even remember.”

Joan pursed their lips. “No. You’re not high right now. The doctors are pulling you off to make sure it was just the drugs.”

“Um…” Virgil didn’t have a defense for that.

“You seem,” Joan paused the TV. “You seem a little off. A lot off.”

Virgil rolled his eyes. “I was hit by a truck. Generally,-”

“No.” Joan shook their head. “Not like that. Are you sure you’re okay? You’re… really tense. Anxious.”

Well, they’d hit it right on the nose, hadn’t they? The entire situation was just too much. Virgil snorted. “I mean, that’s kind of my base mode.”

Dorian was grinning widely, although Virgil couldn’t figure out why. He stood up and shrugged. “Bye bye, my boy!”

And he was gone, replaced by Joan, who snapped in his face. “Hey! Thomas, stop ignoring me!”

“I’m not ignoring you!”

“Yes, you are! You keep looking over there! What’s over there?”

“No one!”

Joan glared. “Anxiety is not your base mode. Don’t say stuff like that.”

Virgil raised an eyebrow.

And something shifted in Joan’s expression. They buffered for a second and Virgil’s stomach did a few swoops. He was doing this all wrong. Did Thomas act like this? No. No, he didn’t. Virgil did, and Joan was slowly looking more and more horrified. “You… in the bathroom, you were shouting for someone to… to give Thomas back.”

Virgil said nothing. He messed with the bumpy edge of the blanket and didn’t look at Joan. Joan opened their mouth, but before they could speak, across the room, two phones started blinking and making little, familiar noises.

Thomas’s and Joan’s.

Joan frowned at the phones. “That’s a lot of notifications.”

Virgil couldn’t be more grateful for the distraction. He gestured for them. “Get it. It might be important.”

Joan crossed the room and picked the phones up. They tossed Thomas’s to Virgil and Virgil grabbed it as it slid off the bed. Meanwhile, Joan unlocked their phone and stared with narrowed eyes at the screen.

Virgil scrutinized his own screen, realizing suddenly that he had no idea what the password was. Logan kept track of those things. Discretely, Virgil lay the phone down. “What’s going on?”

Joan mumbled something and sat down in the chair beside Virgil. “Everyone is going crazy on the internet about… something. A live stream?” Joan frowned and continued thumbing through it. They looked more resigned as they went. “Someone must have hacked into your account.”

Virgil’s eyes widened. “Someone is live streaming on my account?”

“Looks like it…” Joan messed with the phone. They looked up suddenly. “Oh god, I hope it’s not some crazy person.”

Virgil leaned over to look at the screen, and Joan tilted it toward him so he could see. “Just log in, and you can see the stream.”

Joan did. “Look at the title,” Joan whispered. ‘Help me please?’

Virgil’s heart thudded. If someone was using his account to do something bad… “There are kids that watch-”

“We don’t know. We don’t know what it is yet.”

“Play it.”

Joan glanced at him, nodded, and pressed play.

On the screen, someone was filming… the sky.

Virgil frowned and Joan released a breath. “Okay, it’s probably some hacker.”

“Oh!” said a voice in the video. “Oh dear. Thank you, dear viewer, for informing me. How do I turn this to face me? Where’s the camera? The front? Oh!”

The camera shuffled, showing flashes of a crosswalk, and then some trees. A park. A playground. It settled on a young man with a strained smile. “Um. Okay, hello! Hi! So, I am… a bit lost.”

Virgil blinked. “Patton?”

The second his shock faded, relief rushed through him. Patton was okay! He didn’t realize he could feel so much relief at once. It was like a warm sheet just out of the dryer folded around him.

Joan’s mouth dropped open.

Patton kept speaking. And it was definitely Patton. Short, slightly chubby, freckled, and wearing bit-too-large glasses that he was constantly nervously adjusting. “So, um, guys. This is a message for you if you see this. I don’t-” His voice choked. “I don’t know how I got here or where I am, but I thought one of you might see this if I… you know. This thing.” He gestured vaguely at the video. For a moment, Virgil wondered where Patton had gotten a phone.

But in the scheme of things, that was less important. More importantly, how did Patton get outside?

The others are… elsewhere, Dorian had said.

“You’re so freaking smart, Patt,” Virgil said. He grabbed the phone to look at it better and Joan squawked.

“Is this some kind of joke? A prerecorded thing? You had me seriously freaked out!”

Virgil didn’t bother with them. He was busy scanning the video. Where was Patton?

“I’m in this… park, I suppose.” Patton said as if answering. “There’s a duck pond. I tried to feed one, but ducks have teeth. Did you know ducks have teeth? Roman’s ducks never have teeth. Maybe it wasn’t a duck… Sorry, rambling. I can’t believe… There’s like, I can feel the wind.” Patton looked like he wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Virgil could relate.

This was all going to look like some elaborate joke. A massive stunt for the sanders sides videos. Virgil didn’t mind that in the least.

He was still ignoring Joan.

“Thomas, please! Thomas. Thomas! Damn it, Virgil.”

Virgil glanced up reflexively.

And Joan’s breath caught. “Oh my god. No way. No fucking way.”

Virgil didn’t have time for them. He scanned the background of the video. There. A clock tower in the background. That was… That was just across the street. “Oh, thank God.” Patton wasn’t far off.

Virgil craned his neck to look out the window. “He’s down there. He’s in the park. Frick. We’ve got to get him before he gets himself killed.” He tried to get up again and this time Joan held him down. A shot of panic flew through him, and he pushed them away. “Joan, I know you think I’m crazy, but please. Let me find him. Please.” He needed to keep him safe. This was his fault. This entire situation was his fault!

“No!” Joan grabbed the phone back, still keeping Virgil on the bed. “You explain to me what’s going on right now.”

Patton was talking through the phone. “I’m just going to keep this going until one of you guys find me. Virgil, Logan, Roman. Anyone, really.” A pause and he continued in a quiet, quavering voice. “Virgil? Are you there?”

“He needs me, Joan!”

Joan just stared at Virgil. Their eyes flicked around Thomas’s face. Virgil had no idea what they saw there, but he could guess. A second later, they released Virgil. Virgil didn’t move. His chest ached slightly where Joan had held him down. “If you are in here, in this bed, who is out there?”

Virgil swallowed thickly. Joan was a smart person. They didn’t need this spelled out for them. Or, maybe they did. “Patton,” he ground out. “obviously.”

Joan shook their head. “Patton is a fictional character. We made him up!”

“You made up a version of Patton that already existed inside Thomas’s subconscious. Look, I’ll explain if you just let me-”

“You’re not going outside! You can’t even walk without fainting, Thomas!”

Virgil clenched his jaw and flopped back on the bed. “Patton has no sense of self-preservation. Do you get that? He will talk to anyone. He will step in front of cars. He will try to hug strangers and get himself kidnapped! Look! Look, he’s right down there!” Virgil picked up the phone and pointed down at the street. He searched for a second and spotted Patton’s bright blue shirt easily. He was wandering dizzily up and down the sidewalk, phone in hand. “There. You see him? He is going to walk into the freaking road.”

Joan peered through the blinds. They were pale and emotionless. “I… I don’t understand. That’s… that’s him. That’s Patton.”

“Please, Joan.” Virgil grabbed their arm, and Joan stared down at Virgil’s hand. “If…” Virgil’s stomach twisted at the idea, “If I can’t get down there, then you can. Just bring him.”

Joan took in a deep breath and pulled away from the window. They threw on their jacket. Their motions were hurried, almost frantic. They scrambled to the door and then paused. “You’re not Thomas…” They said at the doorway. It wasn’t a question.

Virgil looked at them steadily. “No.”

Joan sucked in air and nodded quickly. They steadied themselves on the doorframe. “Okay… Okay.”

Through the phone, Patton spoke up. “Goodness, it really is a funny ol’ world!”

As Joan rushed away, Virgil couldn’t agree more.


	6. Chapter 6

Roman’s first perceptions were the smell of gasoline, bright neon lights, and a high pitched whine that had him shoving his hands over his ears. He tripped on the edge of a gutter and suddenly he was on the floor, a sharp pain in the back of his heel. The concrete was wet and there was gravel in his palms and people were walking and talking and laughing and stepping and his butt was getting wet. Tires crackled on the road. They sloshed through puddles. His heart raced. Where was he? How did he get here?

Someone touched his shoulder as he scrambled to his feet. He reached for his dagger but met an empty belt.

“Hey, dude? You okay?”

The words drifted to him slowly, but once he registered them, the world steadied and settled. He swallowed dryly and nodded at the stranger. “Thank you, citizen. I am just fine!”

The stranger gave him a funny look but walked away. And Roman was left there, one foot on the sidewalk, the other in the gutter. There was a small mat of wet leaves under his foot. He grimaced at the squishy wetness that was now his left boot.

Roman knew exactly where he was. He knew what an illusion felt like. He was the master of illusions.

And this? None of this was an illusion. In movies, he’d seen people wake up in impossible situations and question whether or not they were dreaming, but Roman didn’t need to question. A person knows when they are awake, and Roman knew. This was not the mindscape.

Unfortunately, he did not know how that was possible.

Taking a step away from the street, he sat down a bit too roughly into a rickety cafe chair. No one paid him any attention. Which was just offensive, honestly. But no. No, he needed to focus.

Roman chewed his lip and took in the street quickly. Where was he? The street was vaguely familiar. The city was so busy and overcast and it was draining his energy. He always attempted to avoid imagining places like this. There was… too much. Too many smells and sounds and sights. Everything was clashing together all at once and there were so many eyes. Everyone was looking at him. Were they looking at him? There was no reason for them to be.

He snapped his gaze to the floor and breathed in. And out again. When he looked up again, the knot in his chest had loosened slightly. He’d just pretend he wasn’t bothered by the people! Yes! That was the solution. Panicking would be extremely unheroic at this moment. It wasn’t like he’d done much to help the situation earlier… He needed to make up for that.

Roman’s stomach swooped, and he stood up as memories came rushing back. The car accident and all of the doors he’d jammed open in Thomas’s mind and Virgil and the great black smoke and a bright light…

“Huh.”

This was a very insightful statement, obviously. He looked down at himself, wiggled his fingers. They felt solid enough… He was wearing his typical outfit; a stately white suit with a red sash and solid walking boots that had a bit too much of a heel (what could he say? He liked being tall). At the moment, the white suit was completely soiled, covered in blotches of grey water from his fall on the sidewalk. He wrinkled his nose. He’d never had to deal with dirty clothes in the mindscape.

“No, Roman!” he said. “Focus!”

He was alone so obviously, he needed to find the others. The others would probably be somewhere too? Probably. Oh god, was he alone out here?

“No. We were all sucked into the portal…”

Across the street, there was an old city park filled with willow trees. Some college student was attempting to have a yoga class despite the mud and woman was whining to him about her muddy yoga mat. Roman sympathized with both.

Alright, so he had a park and… a hospital. He turned around. A few buildings down, there was a large hospital.

He considered the hospital for a moment curiously. In all honesty, he probably would have simply moved on, losing interest in the building, if he hadn’t noticed a commotion at the front entrance (he also may have been attracted by the massive revolving doors because those things were so cool).

People were grumbling, a crowd gathering at the front.

A crowd. Wonderful! He loved crowds. Roman frowned. No, he didn’t. He did… and he didn’t? It was complicated.

Whatever. His hand drifted down to his dagger-less belt reflexively as he jogged closer. “What’s going on?” he asked a man in a suit.

“Some idiot doesn’t know how to use a freaking door,” the man spat. He jerked a cigarette out of his mouth and flicked off the ashes.

Roman’s eyes widened. “I’m sure there’s no need to be so dramatic, sir!”

The man snorted and looked Roman up and down. “… Sure, buddy.”

Roman had no idea what he was implying. Shaking off the man’s incredulous look, Roman pushed through the crowd, jolting when someone elbowed him in the stomach. That was an accident, surely. He pulled out (finally) from the group of laughing people. They were filming. They were standing there filming the poor soul rather than helping them!

But when he finally spotted the person in the revolving door, he understood why.

A very familiar figure was stuck in the continuously moving door, shuffling in a circle with wide eyes. People entered the door, went through and exited on the other side, but every time it opened up for the young man, he hesitated for too long and was caught inside the little triangle of glass again.

Despite himself, a small smile found its way up Roman’s face. He set his hands on his hips and shook his head. “Logan, what are you doing?”

Logan’s head snapped toward him at his voice with a look of profound relief. “Roman! I can’t seem to- to-” He missed the exit again and threw his hands in the air, nearly knocking off his glasses. He was rumpled and mussed and obviously just as disoriented as Roman had been a few minutes earlier.

“You know him?” someone asked.

“My brother,” Roman lied easily. “Lo! Come on! This is stupid!”

“I AM AWARE!”

The door opened up again and this time Roman darted forward to grab him, but Logan reared back. Roman choked back a laugh. “Just step out!”

Logan replied, but his voice was muffled by the glass. However, his expression was enough to convey his irritation. The door opened up again and Logan spoke rapid fire. “ThedoorwontstopmovingItriedIt’selectronicwhatisgoingon!”

And… he was gone again.

Roman chewed his lip. Alright, he had an idea.

The next time Logan came around, instead of pulling him out, Roman jumped in with him. Instantly, Logan’s tense shoulders relaxed. “While I admire your willingness to help, Roman, I fear you have simply trapped us both…”

As he was still speaking, Roman wrapped a hand around his elbow and guided him out of the door, inside the hospital.

They were free.

Outside, the crowd cheered, apparently glad to see some type of resolution to their midday entertainment.

Roman pursed his lips and Loga just stared at them. “Oh,” he said.

“I was really confused too at first. Did you wake up in there?”

Logan shook himself. “Unfortunately.”

Waving off the crowd, Roman guided Logan to the side and sat him down on a tightly stretched lounge chair, and Roman crouched in front of him. “Are you alright, Logan?” he asked him.

Logan nodded. His eyes darted around the room, never resting, and he gulped visibly. “I am… fine. Yes. Roman, this may come as a shock to you, but I believe that-”

“We’re not in the midscape? I know. It is okay. Don’t freak out.”

Logan snorted. “As if I…” But he couldn’t quite finish, too distracted by the activity around them. A large fountain splashed in the middle of the entryway, people rushed this way and that, the receptionist was not picking up the phone, the elevator bell rang and more people piled out of that tiny box.

Logan dropped his face into his hands and rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. “Okay… Hospital. We are in a hospital.” He looked up. “Thomas must have been in a hospital. He has to be in this very building!”

Roman stuck his lip out. He probably should have thought of that himself… “That makes sense.”

“Of course it does,” Logan snapped. He stood and abruptly walked toward the receptionist (who was now on the phone). “Excuse me, ma’am.”

Roman scrambled after him. “Lo-”

The receptionist mimed ‘just a second’, to which Logan frowned. “Is it not her job to speak to me?” he asked in a low voice.

“She’s on the phone. That’s her job too, I think.”

“Ah.”

The receptionist hung up and smiled at them. “How can I help you, boys?”

Logan opened his mouth. “I desire to locate our host Thomas Sanders. He was in a car accident and we have been-”

Panic alarms flew up in Roman’s mind and he pushed Logan to the side whilst giving the receptionist an eye roll. “We’re Thomas’s brothers. My phone died while mom was texting me the room number.”

Apparently, the customer-service was strong with this one. She continued to smile. “That shouldn’t be a problem. Thomas… Sanders, you said?”

“That is correct!”

Humming as she typed on her computer, the receptionist nodded. “Ah. Yes. I’ve got his record here. Shea and… Christian?”

It was nice that Thomas actually had brothers. Logan almost looked like he was going to protest but Roman stepped on his foot and rolled with her assumption. “Yeah, I’m Shea and that’s Christian. Can we have the room number now?”

The receptionist gave them the number and they raced to the elevator. Logan was frowning fiercely. “I did not need your intervention.”

Roman snorted and pressed the elevator button over and over and over as he waited for the door to open. “You were going to tell her the truth!”

“… And?”

Roman sighed. “See? This is why we don’t work well separately…”

The sky was beautiful! Beautiful gray sky! The trees were beautiful! The people were so wonderful! There were so many different things and everything looked different and unique and very cool! It was a miracle he knew how to work this phone, but he’d managed it and everything was going to be just fine!

Patton sat down underneath a tree and propped up the live streaming phone on his knees. He was very scared right now, but he had had the phone in his pocket and surely he wasn’t totally alone! Surely the others would find him!

Tears pricked the edges of his eyes and he wiped them away with his shoulder. People kept sending him hearts and smiles and they bounced around the bottom of the screen. That was nice. “That’s really nice of you” he croaked. “You’re all so sweet. You know, I love you guys. We all do, but I really really do. So, all of the people watching this. I love, I love, I love you. V-Virgil’s gonna find me and it’ll be okay, but it’s nice to have… to have some company.”

He sniffed and was about to check his messages again when someone gasped from behind him. He twisted to look, but the person yelped and darted behind a nearby tree. As if that was hiding them.

Slowly, Patton stood. He brushed himself off and dropped the phone, still streaming, to his side. “Hello?”

The person peaked around the tree with wide eyes and then stepped into the open entirely. Their mouth was open and they were bunching their jacket in their hands. “Holy smokes,” they whispered.

Patton’s heart soared. He shrieked, barreling into them and hugging them tightly, and they nearly fell backward. “Joan!” He felt like crying a lot of tears, but Joan, after getting over their shock, hesitantly hugged him back, and Patton didn’t feel as scared after that. It was nice that Patton was short enough that his head fit perfectly into Joan’s chest.

“I thought I was all alone here!”

“You’re… you’re…” Joan carefully pulled Patton off of them and looked him up and down with their hands on his shoulders. “You’re… short.”

Patton huffed. “We are having a crisis here and that’s what you say!”

Joan blinked rapidly. “Right… it’s just, I didn’t imagine… No. Of course. shoot, Patton, is that really you?”

Cocking his head, Patton stuffed the phone into his pocket. “Of course it’s me, silly!”

Joan was taking longer to respond than they should. They nodded. They stepped back, and forward again, and touched Patton’s shoulder and pulled away. “You’re actually standing here. Like…” They poked him again. “Holy…”

Patton wasn’t sure what was so holy about this moment, but, he thought, whatever floats their boat! “It’s a long story. I need to find Thomas-”

“Apparently, so do I?” Joan shook themselves. They took Patton’s hand quickly and started toward the street. “Come on. Thomas is in the hospital so-”

Patton stopped. “He’s in the hospital!”

“Yeah? You, uh, he was in a car accident.”

“Oh. I forgot about that.”

Joan gave him a look and shook their head. “Are you okay?”

Patton smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m always like this. Virgil says that us feelings are illogical and it’s completely normal!”

“… okay?”

Joan led him to a crosswalk and they hoped from foot to foot as they waited for the light to change. Patton wasn’t worried anymore. Joan was a good friend and they would help him. Apparently, Joan was still worried for some reason.

But that didn’t matter because Patton finally spotted something that made life so much better.

He grabbed Joan’s arm so quickly Joan jumped. “Thom- Patton, what the heck?”

Patton didn’t want to look away. He might lose it. “Look!” he whispered.

Joan wasn’t looking. So Patton pointed. “LOOK!”

“I don’t know what you’re looking at. It’s time to walk, okay?”

“No!” Patton looked away for just an instant and pointed harder. Across the street, a little white fluffball of an animal was happily trotting around its owner’s feet. “It’s a real puppy.”

Joan tugged Patton into the street and Patton followed them willingly, eyes still trained on the dog. “Can I pet it? Do you think they’ll let me pet it? I bet it’s super soft. Like Roman’s blankets or the fuzzy pillow Virgil has in his corner or-or-”

He almost completely missed Joan’s reply. Their voice was strained and tight. “We have to get to Thomas, remember?”

Patton continued looking even as Joan dragged him into the revolving doors, and WOW. Doors that MOVED. He gasped and pressed his hands to the glass to push it faster. “What do you know? Look, Joan! I’m a spinning Pop! Get it? Do you get it, Joan?”

“Why are you the adult character again?”

He pressed his nose into the glass and smiled at the imprint it made. “I don’t nose.” He chuckled.

Meanwhile, Joan forced themself to breathe. They carefully peeled Patton away from the revolving elevator and thought with a bout of exhaustion that the elevator was sure to be just as ‘exciting’ to Patton as the revolving doors. They steered him to the stairs, keeping a hand tight in Patton’s. “You know, when most friends have a crisis, it’s like, their car broke down, their landlord kicked them out, not…” They looked Patton up and down with a sigh. “This?”

Patton smiled. “Are we almost to Thomas yet?”

Virgil looked up, expecting Joan, and was instead met with two familiar faces. “Logan?”

“And ME TOO, DEAR- oh.” Roman peaked around Logan and frowned. “You’re… not Thomas.”

“Nice to see you too, Princey.”

Logan cocked his head, still in the doorway. “I don’t understand, how are you injured? None of us are injured. Did you manage to incapacitate yourself within the small amount of time which we have been awake?”

Virgil chewed on the inside of his lip and rolled his eyes. But… he was glad they were here. Something in him eased monumentally just knowing that they were alright.

He also believed it was probably time for a little exposition. “Close the door,” he croaked. “Joan went to get Patton. He’s live streaming in the park.”

“How unusually intelligent…”

“Rude, Logan.” Roman finally just pushed passed him, bringing Logan along and shutting the door behind him. He quickly threw himself onto Virgil’s bed, jostling the entire thing. Virgil did his best to hold back his grimace.

Logan sat down primly on the other side. His eyes zipped up and down Virgil’s form and Virgil could practically see the gears turning in his brain. “You…” He pursed his lips. “Are you Thomas or Virgil? I am afraid I am confused.”

Virgil huffed a small laugh. He could relate. “As far as I can tell,” he started. “I’m myself - Virgil - just… in Thomas?”

They both processed that, glancing at each other and then back at him.

“Well, if you’re in Thomas’s body and we’re out here, and you said Patton is- Oh!” At that moment, the door creaked open and Patton poked his head in, Joan just behind him.

“Oh gosh! It’s a party in here! Hi, Virgil! Hi, Logan. Hi, -you don’t have to hide it’s just me- Roman!”

Roman, who had dove behind the bed, bounced back up as soon as Patton spoke. “Good. We’re all here! Greetings, Joan of Ar…!”

“Don’t make that joke.”

“Wasn’t gonna!”

Joan stared, their hand still on the doorknob of the shut door. Their knuckles were white. “Hi,” they managed. “I’ll, um, I’m just… Can someone explain what’s going on here?”

As one, they all turned to Virgil, who wanted to crawl under the blankets and disappear.

Patton wrinkled his nose. “Wait a moment, where’s Thomas?”

Virgil sighed. Alright. Here it was. He struggled up on his elbows. He hated this. He hated being in pain and being bed bound and just lying there. “Thomas is being held captive by It, who apparently has a name now.”

Everyone in the room went very still.

And then Joan spoke up, voice soft. “…It?”

“It’s, uh, It’s a long story…”


	7. Chapter 7

“I think I understand.” Logan steepled his hands over his knees curled to his chest in the slightly-too-small hospital armchair, and rested his chin lightly on his fingertips. “With us gone from the mindscape, the, em, the thing that was using you, Virgil, has room to manifest a physical form. And thus, became this… Dorian.”

Ah yes, Logan with the ever convenient exposition. This was the first time he’d spoken directly at Virgil, looking him in the eye, since he entered the room. Virgil nodded. He was starving and his stomach was making it hard to think. It was funny. He’d never had to worry about food before. But that was silly to think about right now. He rubbed his eyes and nodded. “Yep.”

In the hospital room, they sat on edge just in case someone came in. Patton and Roman could make it to the bathroom, and Logan would duck under the bed if a doctor came in. Joan was in the only other chair, given that they were actually supposed to be in here. Roman and Patton were crowded on the bed with Virgil and ever so often they would move too much and then apologize profusely when Virgil winced.

“Well, I don’t understand,” Joan said. They were slightly more composed than before. Perhaps still shocked, but also willing to ignore that shock in order to deal with the problems at hand. They leaned forward and scanned Virgil quickly. “What is Dorian? What is he?”

“Rage.”

Virgil flinched and his eyes snapped to the corner of the room.

Dorian sat there, cross-legged on the floor with lightning in his eyes despite remaining calm and collected on the outside. He was still wearing that bright orange suit. “Rage. Pure, unadulterated, uncontrolled rage. It’s simple, Dingus.” He winked.

And then he was gone.

_It’s simple, dingus._

“Oh. Oh gosh, you can see him, can’t you?”

Virgil cleared his throat and met Joan’s gaze. He shrugged. “… No?”

The others groaned.

“That’s probably not good, right?” Patton fumbled with his hands.

“No, it means he has enough power to talk to the conscious mind, which, at the moment is Virgil.”

They were all silent.

And then a very soft word on Roman’s part. “We are truly in a tangle now, aren’t we?” And even quieter, “Quite the adventure…”

On a normal day, the others might have scolded him. Life’s problems were not an adventure. Going insane and getting their conscious mind imprisoned by Rage himself was not an adventure. It was a bloody nightmare!

But right now, no one had the energy to be irritated at Roman.

In fact, no one had any energy at all.

There they were, ‘quite a tangle’ in a tiny hospital room, sleepy and confused and afraid.

Logan yawned. “We can’t stay here.”

Virgil’s heart thumped. He was right. They could not stay here. But that did not make it any more terrifying to think about. He’d be alone again if they left.

Alone again. With him.

It’s not like you haven’t done it before.

“But that was before the All New And Improved, Not Possessing Your Ugly Mutt Dorian was around, huh?” Dorian said from across the room.

Another one of him dropped his head onto Virgil’s shoulders, curled up close to him on the bed, and he stuck out his lip. “Don’t you think I get lonely too, brother?”

Virgil scowled. “Go away,” he whispered. One of the Dorians popped out of existence, and the other rolled his eyes from the doorway. Apparently, he wasn’t limited to one form. Virgil didn’t know what that entailed but he didn’t like it.

“Whatev.”

Dorian was gone again and now Logan was speaking. “I imagine Thomas wouldn’t mind us using his apartment.”

“I have a car,” Joan offered. They stood and paced the room, chewing their lip.

The decision was made quickly. Joan would take the sides home, and Virgil would stay here like Thomas was supposed to. The idea had his mind racing at a million miles an hour. The sides could get in another car accident. They could be injured. They could run into the street. Did they know if there was a mental leash to Thomas on them? What if they forgot about him here?

“Hey, Virge. It’s okay.” Patton grabbed his hand and held it tightly. He was shaking, perhaps more than Virgil.

Virgil fixed him with a firm look. “Do exactly what Joan says. Don’t run off.”

Patton answered with a small nod and a thick swallow. “Stay with Joan,” he whispered to himself.

They were about to go out into the world without a sense of self-preservation, namely, Virgil, and it was probably going to drive Virgil insane. “Don’t let them do anything stupid,” he said to Joan.

Logan, hearing him, rolled his eyes. “I, for one, will be perfectly alright, Virgil. You have no need to worry.”

Roman snorted. “Tell that to the revolving door-”

“Did I ask for your opinion?”

“What?”

“Nothing!”

Joan shook their head in disbelief, a slight smile on their face. “I’ll call you when we get to Thomas’s if you want.”

That was a good idea. Virgil liked that idea. “Okay. Okay, call me.”

And just like that, everyone trickled away. And Virgil was alone. Well, almost alone.

“What kind of friends are they?” Dorian huffed. “Abandoning us! Rude much? Thomas would not approve!”

Virgil scowled. “You’re killing Thomas. I don’t think you get to decide what he does and does not approve of.”

Virgil expected a snarky reply, but instead, Dorian blinked, almost confused.

Virgil sighed. It was going to be a long night.

* * *

What ifs were usually Virgil’s domain. Logan usually ran the hows, Patton ran the whos and Roman typically covered whys. But with Virgil gone, Roman found himself pulled into the gap he usually filled. After all, anxiety did take a great deal of creativity. All those fake scenarios and constant reruns. Check and check again. Repicturing every second. Every detail.

Not that he was ever going to admit that to anyone.

Either way, Roman was aware Logan was getting dangerously close to smacking him, but he was having difficulty shutting his mouth.

“What if Dorian is actually an invading alien? What if he’s a virus? What if he gets Virgil on his side! Oh no, what if he makes Virgil think he’s better off with-”

“Roman!”

“I AM SORRY OKAY??”

“Would you guys calm down!” Joan’s hands were tight on the steering wheel. Logan was in the front seat and Roman and Patton sat in the back. Roman was aware this arrangement was a conscious one. Patton had a tendency to run off. It wasn’t his fault really. He just did not have much impulse control. Anyway, in the back seat, they could child lock the doors. Roman had joined Patton because, shockingly, he himself was quite overwhelmed. The moment they’d stepped back out into the street, everything was too bright and colorful and loud. He couldn’t get his eyes to stick onto one thing. There was a bird flying and then there was a hotdog stand and a car rushed past and the wind was cold and where was everyone again?

He’d reached out rather blindly and managed to get a fistful of Thomas’s jacket (apparently taken out of his room). Logan, startled, had jumped away a bit, frowning. “Are you alright?”

Roman blinked. Gosh. Who would have thought he’d be so clumsy at… all of this. “Fine.” Which was a lie? His brain was buzzing. Each new object sent little ideas pouring through him so quickly he couldn’t quite catch them.

Perhaps Thomas acted as a filter in some ways. And now he didn’t have one. Nothing could be ignored.

But he could not possibly concern his fellow adventurers, now could he? He squinted at Logan as they followed Joan down the sidewalk. “Are you wearing Thomas’s jacket.”

“…Yes. I am.”

He didn’t offer any more than that and Roman didn’t ask for it. But he saw, just like he saw everything else, that Logan kept pulling at the zipper tighter and closer to himself. He saw Patton flinching every time a car passed. And he saw Joan’s nervous glances at Patton, who was unabashedly holding Joan’s hand.

Under normal circumstances, Virgil might have been the one to take Patton’s hand out of Joan’s and hold it in his own; given that it wasn’t exactly normal to hold hands with someone else constantly. But he wasn’t here now.

Logan had very quietly arranged them in the car, and he didn’t think Joan or Patton even noticed the very calculated move. But Roman had learned over the time he’d spent with the little nerd that every action he took was always purposeful.

Sometimes this irritated him. He was grateful today.

They were about halfway home when the What Ifs began in earnest.

He’d taken to staring at his hands and wrapping his fingers in odd ways just to see how it looked. If he blurred his eyes a bit, the fingertips were mountaintops and there was a little man sitting there, waving at him.

And if this was his normal life, there really would be a little man there. Roman might have given him a name. He might have built him a tiny house and make shrunk himself down to visit sometime.

But he just had fingers right now. And wasn’t that horrifying?

What if he never got home? What if he was stuck out here forever? He’d never be able to create again!

He dropped his hands into his lap and noted like he noted everything, the feel of the white, satin pants he had. It was too thin. Fragile. Why exactly had he thought it was in any way practical to wear an outfit entirely made of satin? People only wore satin to bed. Or, maybe that was wrong? Did people wear satin?

“Logan, do people wear satin?”

“If they did not, you would not be wearing it?”

They bumped over a small speed bump, and Patton grabbed Roman’s hand reflexively. Roman let him. It was only natural he’d be frightened by car rides after all of this. “No, but I mean, like, normally?”

Logan twisted and shrugged at him. “I do not see why this is important. Satin is a high-quality fabric. Why would you not wish to wear it?”

Joan snorted. They had their hands on the wheel, but they glanced back for a second. “No. People don’t usually wear stuff that you’re wearing, Roman. If that’s what you mean. Don’t sweat it, man. It’s not like you’re gonna see anyone anyway.”

Roman huffed. Seriously? It’s like they thought he was vain. “I am not concerned about people’s opinions!”

“I’m concerned.” Patton sighed. “But just… generally.”

Logan rolled his eyes. “You’re always concerned.”

“… Yeah.”

He let go of Roman’s hand and curled up against the window. Sensitive today. Then again, who was he kidding? They were all a huge mess.

Joan pulled into Thomas’s driveway and switched off the car.

They sat there. Motionless.

Maybe they’d just… stay here. In this little cocoon. The front door was familiar but it was so unusual seeing it in person. The sensation was similar to visiting a childhood home and realizing how much smaller everything was than you remembered. Things were just… a little different.

Joan exhaled tiredly and opened the door. The keys rattled loudly when they shoved it into their pocket. “Come on, guys.”

The moment broke. Logan got out and Roman followed suit. He shut the door behind him, glanced back to ensure Patton was following them, and they stepped up to the house.

They stopped at the front door as Joan fumbled with the doorknob. Logan had a glint in his eyes. “Its… odd,” he said softly. His eyes darted around the house, taking it in.

Roman nodded. “I know.”

Meanwhile, Joan cursed. They caught themselves and straightened, eyes wide. “Uh. Sorry, Patton.”

Patton wrinkled his nose. “You don’t need you to edit yourself for me, buddy. Although I appreciate the thought.”

Joan sort of looked at him. Roman wasn’t sure what exactly they saw. But after a second, the strange look passed away and Joan cleared their throat. “Uh. Yeah. Okay. Um, so usually Thomas is home and just lets me in so…”

“We don’t have a key.” Logan realized. He pinched between his eyes.

“But he has a spare hidden around here so, like, you guys know where it is??” They let the sentence dangle.

Roman raised an eyebrow at Logan, who scowled. “You can’t assume I do all memory cognition work, Roman.”

“It is usually your department,  _smart_ rate!”

Logan huffed. “Virgil must have hidden it. He is always worried about burglars anyhow.”

Joan watched this exchange with interest. “But you’re all the same person. Shouldn’t you just… know all same things?”

Logan shrugged. He backed up, looking at the windows. “There is significant overlap, yes. But there would not really be a point in being separate entities if we all had the same workload. Splitting up the job makes it possible for Thomas to function well.” He shuttered. “I cannot imagine trying to do everything.”

Which was, in fact, what Dorian seemed to be doing. Roman pushed away that unseemly thought and followed Logan down the steps.

“We could use a window?”

Patton gasped. “Can I do it?”

“That one’s unlocked.” Joan pointed. It was the living room window and it would plop whoever went through, right beside the staircase. That staircase.

Making Sanders Sides videos had always been easy. The others would just pull back and let whichever ‘character’ being recorded have complete control of the board for a little while. Roman loved it.

Climbing through a window was also exciting. They worked it open, Logan grumbling about the planter they were stepping in the entire time. As soon as it was open enough for Patton to fit through, he clambered inside, tumbling onto the carpet with a laugh. He laid there on the floor and Roman stuck his head in after him. He was too tall to fit through. “Are you quite alright?”

“Just dandy, kiddo. Glad to be home. You’ve got to feel the carpet. Like, I can  _Feel the carpet._ ”

He laid there for a moment longer, running his hands along the floor. “Fascinating,” Logan murmured from over Roman’s shoulder. “Is it different than before, Patton?”

“Just… it’s just more, I guess.”

Logan blinked. That wasn’t exactly a concrete answer.

Joan cleared their throat. “Are you going to let us in?”

“Oh! Oh, yeah!” Patton scrambled to his feet and darted to the front door, and the others quickly walked around the house to meet him.

The moment the door opened, Patton grabbed Roman’s hand and jerked him inside. “Roman, look at everything! It’s here! It’s like, this is what Thomas gets to see!”

Roman quietly took his hand out of Patton’s and stayed there, still, in the kitchen. How strange. He had not thought before that he was being deprived of anything. But it was clear now that looking through a TV screen, and actually being there were two very different things.

Joan sighed tiredly, pushed past them, and flopped onto the couch. They were not trying to watch them, but Roman knew they were. How could they not?

After all, only hours ago, they were fictional.

* * *

 

homas didn’t have any way to reference time.

He had no idea how long he had been in here. Days? Weeks? Years?

Sometimes someone watched him from the cell next to him. They watched with glowing red eyes. He couldn’t see their form. The little dungeon was cold and damp and dark, but he had a nice bed and food that appeared regularly. It wasn’t so bad, all things considered.

Maybe this was like an Inception sort of situation? The deeper in the mind, the quicker time passed. He couldn’t really explain otherwise why no one had come to break him out of here yet. He sat on the floor by the door and knocked his head against the wall boredly. He wasn’t injured. In fact, the eyes had done nothing but stare at him. He didn’t really know what to make of it.

“Oh you’re back,” he said one time.

The eyes flickered and disappeared.

He wondered if he’d shocked them. “Hey.” He maneuvered onto his knees and poked his head out the little window in between them. “So are you a prisoner too?”

He didn’t get any impression of malevolence from the eyes, despite their hue.

The eyes continued to watch warily, and Thomas sighed. “You would think being stuck in your own head would be more exciting, ya know?”

The person snorted.

Was that amusement?

Thomas pulled back into his cell and stared at the ceiling. “Something is wrong. I dunno what, but I don’t think I’m supposed to be here.”

Silence.

And then a quiet voice. It was smooth and clipped. “Correct.”

Thomas froze. He squinted into the shadows. “Do you know a way out of here?”

A hesitation. “No.”

“I figured not.” Thomas chewed his lip. “I wish I knew where the others are. I remember there was this black… cloud. Do you know anything about that? I hope they’re okay…”

Again, a prolonged silence. “They left us.” The words were spoken softly, but firmly. “It was an accident. But they’ve escaped. And they aren’t coming back. They can’t.”

Thomas blinked. Once. And again. “What? They… why would they do that?”

“I said. It was an accident. But they’re in the real world now. They don’t need us. It’s just you and me now.”

Thomas felt sick. He pulled away from the window and stood to pace his tiny cell. Perhaps he ought to be questioning the whole ‘in the real world’ bit, but at this point, he didn’t have the energy. “You’re sure? How do you know?”

“I saw it happen,” the red eyes said. “It was an accident. They were trying to get you away from the black cloud.”

What did that mean? Thomas returned to the window. He screwed his eyes shut. He needed to think this through. If what his fellow prisoner was saying was true, then he couldn’t afford to wait any longer for someone to come and get him. “But if it’s just us, then who is keeping us in here?”

“The thing that was in Virgil, I suppose.’The person came closer. Just a little bit out of the shadows. “This was Its last act before it dissolved. It was overreacting. It tended to do that. Runs hot, you know.” The eyes flashed irritably. “If I’d just approached this differently instead of freaking out.” He kicked something and it slammed into the wall.

Thomas flinched. “Hey. It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

The person laughed. “You’d think that, wouldn’t you?”

They fell silent.

Thomas cursed quietly. “Well… this is… this is my mind. Isn’t it? I should be able to manipulate it how I like.”

There was a long pause. “I mean, yeah? I don’t know.”

Thomas nodded. He could work with that. “Then I’ll just…” He walked up to the door and tugged the handle. “Open.” He tugged again. Nothing happened. He frowned.

The person came closer, into the light from the little window in Thomas’s cell. Thomas was not surprised to see his own face looking back at him. His eyes flashed red again and then faded into Thomas’s normal brown. He dropped his head into his hands and leaned against the windowsill between their two cells. “Perhaps if you worked harder,” he said.

Thomas scowled at him and jerked at the door again, unsuccessfully. “So what are you supposed to be, hmm? My idiocy?”

His fellow prisoner gasped and stomped away from the window. “No!”

Thomas blinked, confused. “I was… I was joking. Are you offended?”

“No!”

Which he took to mean yes.

“Uh. Sorry? I guess. What are you then?”

“N _ot Idiocy!_ ”

Thomas rolled his eyes and turned back to the door. Maybe he couldn’t just open it, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t break out some other way. He turned to the window. It was evening outside and the light was a soft orange. The golden hour, as a photographer might say. The window was just a bit above Thomas’s head, and it was not very large, but if he could climb up there, maybe he could break the glass. Thomas glanced around the room. It was empty but for his bed. Quickly, he grabbed it from the bottom and dragged the bed over to the window. Then, he climbed on top of the sheets and looked out.

“What’s out there?”

Apparently, the other prisoner’s ire hadn’t lasted long. “It’s a desert. Looks like New Mexico.” The sun was setting over large collum-like mountains, lighting them bright orange, and the sky behind was inky and filled with stars. Thomas could see a great expanse of scruffy plants, and in the distance, a single road stretched out into nowhere.

“I can’t believe this isn’t real,” he murmured.

The stranger snorted. “Just break the glass, my dude.”

Thomas scowled and turned around to look for something to do so.

And there, to his surprise, lay an ax. He hopped down and picked the ax up. “Alright. Cool.”

After that, he made short order of the window. Ripping off the sheet, he covered the bottom of the window in padding and climbed out with only slight discomfort. He pulled himself up and over and rolled out into the dirt.

He looked up at the fading sky and wondered if there was anything out there. How far did this universe of his extend? Was it like a video game? Did things stop existing when he wasn’t looking at them?

A slight shock of panic flew through him at this thought and he scrambled up, brushing himself off. He turned back to his former cell. The building he had been in was made of stucco, and it was half buried in the sand. Next to his window was another window. Inside, glowing red eyes still watched him.

“What are you waiting for?” the stranger said, muffled by the building. “Get out of here!”

Thomas cocked his head and crouched in front of the window. “What? And just leave you here?”

The stranger blinked and the red light faded again. He looked into his own eyes and saw quite a bit of confusion. “Yes?”

Thomas shook his head. Okay, so the guy was a bit annoying, but he wasn’t going to just leave him in the middle of the desert, real or not. He picked up the ax and gestured for the stranger to back away. The stranger did so, covering his face, and Thomas axed through the glass. It shattered, and a moment later, the stranger poked his head out with a wide grin. “Gosh darn, Thomas! Whoda thought!”

Thomas didn’t really know what that meant, but it didn’t matter. He grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the cell. The moment he was free, the stranger laughed and flopped down on the sand dramatically. “Freedom! At long last, I know her!”

Thomas watched from above. “Are you done yet?”

The stranger rolled his eyes and stood up. His excitement dried up as he looked out at the great desert around them. “Wow, Tommy. You couldn’t put us in a nice city? New York, maybe? Somewhere with food or something?” He sighed. “But this is okay, I guess. Better than the subconscious.”

Thomas hummed in agreement, although he wasn’t really sure what ‘the subconscious’ was like. He could imagine it was not pleasant.

They started walking without really thinking about it. They walked toward the setting sun, toward the road, and Thomas wished that his shoes were better suited for walking. Then again, he supposed he was better off than his companion, who was not dressed remotely for a tromp through the desert at night.

“Can’t you just zap yourself into better clothes?” Thomas asked him. The stranger was a few feet away cursing under his breath about a prickly plant he’d stepped on ten minutes ago. He now kicked every plant he came across as if in retribution, but that just pricked his ankles more. He looked up at Thomas’s words and shrugged haughtily.

“I could but I  _like_ this suit! It’s a wonderful suit!”

Thomas raised an eyebrow. But he didn’t disagree. Not verbally, anyway. “Just an idea. Calm down.”

“I  _am_ calm!”

“Okay.”

After a few minutes of this, they finally reached the road. They looked left. And then right.

“So. Setting sun or rising sun?” the stranger asked.

“I dunno. We should try to get back to my… uh, control room, or whatever. Do you know where that is?”

The stranger thought for a minute and then shrugged. “You’ll reach it eventually whichever way you go. But it won’t matter. There’s no one there to pilot the control room. Just you and me.”

Thomas thought about that. He kicked at the sand on the road, scraping his sneakers against the asphalt. “That’s okay,” he conceded softly. “We can pilot it together. It’ll be fine.” If the other sides really had abandoned him, he was just going to have to make do with what he had.

The stranger looked at him, an odd look on his face.

Thomas shifted his weight uncomfortably. “What?”

The stranger smiled, a bit ruefully. “Nothing. I guess I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

Thomas frowned. “What was your name again?”

The stranger didn’t answer for a moment. They started down the road, side by side. But Thomas was patient. He waited. And they walked, hands in their pockets. The sun melted into the ground before them and the light was wonderful and firey.

Eventually, the stranger straightened his orange tie and smoothed down his orange suit coat as he walked. He seemed to steel himself. “My name is Dorian. I’m new around here.”

Thomas smiled. He wondered if it was difficult for the Sides to do that. Naming themselves. It was something more permanent. They were individuals. Not just concepts. People. He wondered if that was frightening. “Well, nice to meet you, Dorian. I’m Thomas.”

Dorian snorted. “I know, dingus.”

Thomas almost laughed at that. Maybe he, no,  _Dorian_ , wasn’t so bad. He could work with him. The others were gone. But Dorian was still here. He’d stayed. And that had to count for something.

Thomas watched the sunset and thought for a moment he saw a spark of smugness on Dorian’s face, but the light changed and it was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ey, its another chapter. Hope you liked ;)

**Author's Note:**

> Review and Kudos? :))


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